Troubadours and Trouveres. 



Jl3eto anD ®lo. 



By HARRIET W. PRESTON, 

AUTHOR OF "ASPENDALE," " LOVE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," 
TRANSLATOR OF " MIREIO," ETC. 







BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS 

1876. 




$ 






Copyright, 1876, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



Cambridge : 
Press of John Wilson 6° Son. 



PREFACE. 



'THHE slight and desultory sketches which 
follow do not aim at any thing like a 
complete illustration of the poetry of Provence, 
whether new or old. I have merely followed, 
in their preparation and arrangement, the lead 
of my own awakening interest ; and I can only 
hope that the reader may like to retrace the 
same rather devious path with me. In pursuing 
it, I have become extremely interested in the 
whole subject of the origin and growth of mod- 
ern versification ; of that rhymed and accented 
poetry in which the finest thought and the most 
ardent emotion of all the European races has 
naturally expressed itself for fully a thousand 
years. When I began to study the versification 
of Frederic Mistrals " Mireio " with a view to 
translation, I was immediately struck by what 



iv PEEFACE. 

I may call its picturesqueness, the affluence and 
melody of its rhymes, its variety and marked 
beauty of rhythm. These qualities I also found 
in the works of Mistral's brother poets, espe- 
cially in Aubanel; and they seemed the more 
remarkable, because for the moment I compared 
that work only with other modern French poe- 
try, which, ever since the despotic days of 
Racine and the Grand Monarque, has been so 
particularly colorless, and poor both in rhythm 
and rhyme. But, in truth, the Provencals had 
only reclaimed their birthright. Rhymed and 
accented verse, characterized by the very quali- 
ties which make their own and all modern verse 
most admirable, appears in the Romance poetry 
of the twelfth century in all the irrecoverable 
perfection of a first full blossoming. To France 
and that century also belong the celestial melo- 
dies of Adam of Saint Victor and Hildebert of 
Tours and the monumental hymn of Bernard 
of Cluny, — three of the greatest masters of the 
sacred Latin . poetry of the Middle Age, — 
which likewise had become in the main a poetry 



PREFACE. V 

of rhyme and accent. And France in those days 
was England, and England, France ; so that all 
theirs is also, in a peculiar manner, ours. It is, 
therefore, through the Latin hymns of the med- 
iaeval church, that the genealogy is to be traced 
of those poetic forms which the Troubadours 
brought to ourselves, and their followers, the 
Minnesingers, diffused through eastern Europe. 
But when we have followed this clew as far 
back as the fourth century and the rhymed 
hymn of Damasus, Bishop of Rome, on the 
martyrdom of Saint Agatha, we are stopped 
by a new wonder. How brief, comparatively, 
although full of unparalleled revolution and 
destruction, the interval between the date of 
this hymn and the time when the only poetry 
known to Roman, and therefore to any, letters, 
was that quantitative verse, the structure and 
the beauties of which, wonderful though they 
be, are as entirely distinct from those of modern 
poetry as if it had originated in another planet ! 
Yet the new verse must have had some antece- 
dent. How was the seeming chasm between 



VI PREFACE. 

the new and the old to be bridged, and con- 
tinuity established? 

It was at this stage of the inquiry that I per- 
ceived the impossibility of discussing the ques- 
tion fully in the limits of a preface, which I had 
once thought to do. I believe, however, that 
the true reading of the riddle is the one indi- 
cated by Dean Trench in the very interesting 
introduction to his collection of sacred Latin 
poetry. The quantitative poetry of classic Rome 
was itself exotic. The rough hexameters of 
Lucretius, the lovely hexameters of Virgil, the 
varied measures of Horace, and the elegiacs of 
Ovid were none of them native growths of the 
Roman soil. They were transplanted from 
Greece ; they attained in their new home a 
rapid and graceful, but never robust, growth ; 
and they were, of course, the instruments of the 
cultured classes only. Under the shadow of 
this adopted and cultivated poesy, there lived 
through all the period of its dominion, away in 
the provinces and among the common people 
everywhere, an humble growth of popular song 



PREFACE. vii 

and proverb, which knew nothing of artificial 
quantities and arbitrary caesuras, but was simply 
and often rudely rhymed and accented, after the 
manner of the poetry which we know best. 
And when the foreign graces of Roman letters 
perished with the general collapse of Roman 
civilization, this lowly, indigenous poetry es- 
caped by its very insignificance, and began to 
grow. Moreover, to the early Christian writers, 
the classic measures w^ere all so replete with 
Pagan associations, that they turned instinc- 
tively for the expression of Christian thought 
and feeliug to simpler, more primitive, and, as 
it seemed to them, less contaminated, forms. 
And here a question occurs concerning the 
characteristics of all exotic poetry ; that is to 
say, all poetry, the forms of which are borrowed 
from a foreign tongue. Has it not its peculiar 
beauties, as well as its necessary defects ? 
Does the large Latin element in the English 
language make the native Latin poetical forms 
more natural and facile to us than they are to 
the Germans, for example ? And does this ac- 



Viii PREFACE. 

count for the undoubted superiority in music of 
modern English to modern German verse ? And, 
if so, how does it happen that there are so few 
Latin words in the most musical English poetry, 
and that our sweetest and most satisfying rhymes 
are invariably Saxon ? 

I can conceive no more fascinating subject for 
patient inquiry and copious illustration than this 
of the origin and development of modern poeti- 
cal forms. I have myself a half-formed purpose 
of sometime devoting to it the volume which it 
deserves ; but, if this purpose is never accom- 
plished, I shall at least cherish the hope that 
the experiments in metric version, and possibly 
some of the fragmentary discussions and sug- 
gestions in the pages that follow, may be of 
trifling value to the future historian of modern 
verse by way of memoirs pour servir. 

Haeeiet W. Peeston. 

Boston, Nov. 13, 1876. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

Preface iii 

Mistral's Calendau 1 

Theodore Aubanel - . 43 

Jacques Jasmin. 1 85 

Jacques Jasmin. II 115 

The Songs of the Troubadours. 1 151 

The Songs of the Troubadours*. II. . . . 194 

The Arthuriad 232 



TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAU. 

"XJIXE years after the appearance of Mireio, 
Frederic Mistral published simultaneously 
at Avignon and at Paris, and in parallel Proven- 
gal and French, a second poem of heroic propor- 
tions, entitled Calendau. The critics, who had 
been quite thrown off their guard by the strange- 
ness and the sweetness, the innocent ardor and 
frank garrulity, of the earlier poem, were far more 
wary in their reception of its successor. Their 
verdict was unanimously and even emphatically 
favorable ; but it was still a verdict, not a star- 
tled cry of admiration. Calendau won priceless 
praise ; but it created comparatively no excite- 
ment, was not long talked about, and never, we 
believe, translated. 

It is proposed to give some account of this 
riper and more formal production of M. Mistral's 
genius, which, if it have not quite the wayward 

1 



2 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

and fascinating audacity of its elder, does yet give 
evidence of immense vigor in its author, and of 
a wealth of imagination sufficiently rare ; while" 
it seems to include almost all of legendary and 
picturesque Provence not portrayed, or at least 
touched with light, in the previous work. 

The reader of Calendau must begin by dis- 
abusing himself of the idea that the sensations 
which he received from Mireio are to be pre- 
cisely repeated. Nothing, indeed, is in the 
nature of things more unlikely than that we 
shall be twice surprised by the same person, 
in the same way. The curious naivete of the 
former tale is abandoned, perhaps deliberately, 
along with the rather transparent pretence of 
singing for " shepherds and farmer-folk alone." 
The usual reading public is addressed in Cal- 
endau, and means not wholly unusual are em- 
ployed to excite and detain our interest. 

In the first place, the lovers in Calendau are 
not children. They are young, indeed, to judge 
by our slow Northern standards ; but they are, 
to all intents, man and woman, and the lady at 
least has lived and suffered much when we see 
her first. Then, it is not a story of to-day, and 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAU. 3 

there can be no doubt that the romantic charm 
of Mireio is perpetually enhanced by the wonder 
that so artless and idyllic a life as the one there 
described can be lived anywhere at the present 
time. The date of Calendau's adventures is 
placed a hundred years back, and very skilfully. 
In the dark and desperate times which preceded 
the outbreak of the first great revolution in 
France, rapine and bloodshed, flight, treachery, 
and siege, were matters of frequent occurrence, 
and the wildest incidents were unhappily proba- 
ble. Moreover, the shadows of even one century 
are sufficient to confuse the wavering line be- 
tween nature and the supernatural, and thus to 
afford all needful latitude to an imagination 
which, although capable, as we know, of a most 
winning playfulness, does yet appear to be es- 
sentially sombre. And this introduction of a 
semi-supernatural element, together with the 
stress continually laid on the ancient literature 
and mediaeval honors of Provence, impart to 
Calendau a kind of transitional character, which 
is far from impairing its interest. The work 
seems, whether the author intended it or no, 
almost to bridge the strange chasm between 



4 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

the old Provengal poetry and the new, and to 
give an effect of continuity to the unique and 
brilliant literature of Southern France. And if 
the fresh realism of MirSio be not here, and we 
deem this a little more like ordinary books than 
the other, that very likeness is also of use some- 
times, as affording us a distinct and accurate 
measure of the poet's own undeniable origin- 
ality. 

He opens his poem conventionally with an 
allusion to his earlier effort, and in the same 
metre : — 

I, who sang once the love and sorrow sore 
Of a young maiden, now essay once more — 
God helping me — to tell a tale of love ; 
How a poor fisherman of Cassis strove 
And suffered, till he won a shining crown, 
Stainless delights, and honor, and renown. 

There folloAvs an invocation to the spirit of 

Provence, as illustrated in the famous past, and 

then the opening scene of the story, which is 

characterized by a suppressed fervor, a kind of 

silent intensity of light and color and emotion, 

hardly to be paralleled in English verse : — 

One summer day, from a high mountain seat, 
Rock-built and with the blossoming heather sweet, 



MI STRAUS CALENDAU. 5 

Two lovers watched the white caps come and go 
Like lambs upon the shining sea below, 
While the note only of the woodpecker 
Startled the silence of the noontide clear. 

Cornice-like hung in air the narrow ledge, 

The dark pines thronged beneath; but, from the edge, 

One saw the sun-touched faces of the trees 

Laugh to the laughter of the Southern seas. 

White on the beach gleamed Cassis : far away 

Sparkled Toulon, and the blue Gardiole 1 lay 

Cloud-like along the deep. So spake the youth 
Unto the maiden: " Never, in good sooth, 
Did hare or pigeon eager huntsman tire 
Like thee ! Have I not won at thy desire 
Fortune and fame, and wrought all prodigies ? 
Poor dreamer, whom my dream for ever flies! " 

And he goes on to describe, in ardent fashion, 
the impossibilities he would yet undertake for 
the sure hope of winning her. The lady answers 
with tears in her divine eyes, owning for the first 
time, seemingly, that she loves him, and him 
alone, but hinting 'at some insurmountable ob- 
stacle to their union. Her lover interrupts her 
with a burst of impetuous gratitude for her con- 
fession : — 

1 La Garduelo. A mountain chain bordering on the sea be- 
tween Cassis and Marseilles. 



6 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

il Why should not then our joy be perfected ? 

We love, we are young, we are free as birds I " he said. 

" Look! how the glowing nature all around 

Lies in the soft arms of the Summer bound, 

Courts the endearments of the tawny queen, 

And drinks the breath of her dark beau>ty in ! 

" The azure peaks, the faint, far hills, lay bare 
Their beating bosoms to the radiant air. 
The changeful sea below us, clear as glass, 
Hinders the ardent sun-rays not to pass 
Into its deepest depth ; and joys no less 
Of Ehone and Yar, to feel the mute caress. 

" Nay, do not speak! But hark how earth and sea 
Have both one language ; how exultantly 
They tell the passionate need they have of love ! 
Dost tremble sweet ? I bid thy fear remove. 
Come, let me lead thee to the altar straight, 
Life at its longest is too brief." " Oh, Fate! 

" Oh, cruel star! " brake forth the woman's wail. 
" Thou must not! Cease, in God's name, lest I fail 
To keep my truth." 

And after murmuring something of dishonor 
to an ancient and unstained name, she breaks 
off with a passionate prayer that the sombre 
woods and mountain solitudes about her may 
continue to shelter her, as they have hitherto, 
from the wrath of her enemies, and the seduc- 
tions of her own heart. There follows a pict- 



MI STRAUS CALENDAU. 7 

ure of the two lovers, without which the reader 

oan hardly form a clear idea of their personal- 

ity:- 

She sprang upon her feet, inspired, erect. 

Oh, beauteous was her head! and well bedecked 

By its dense coronal of shining hair, 

Whereof the twin-coils were as broom-boughs fair 

With yellow flower ; and from her eye sincere 

Storms might have fled, and left the heavens clear. 

White were her teeth, as the fine salt of Berre, 1 

And shy, at times, the lofty glances were 

Of the proud orbs, whose wondrous hue recalled 

The steadfast splendors of the emerald. 

And desert sunshine faint reflected shone 

In the warm tint her peach-like cheeks upon. 

So towered the lithe, tall shape, divinely molded 
By the white linen robe her limbs that folded. 
While at her knees, her rapt love listening, 
As in the blue he heard an angel sing, 
Leaned on his elbow with up-gazing eyes. 
And he — he too — was made in splendid wise : 

With supple limbs, yet strong as sail-yards be 
(A score of years, or barely more, had he), 
And large eyes sad with love, and black as night; 
The down upon his lip was soft and light 
As on vine branches. 

1 The salt obtained from the salt-mines of Berre, a small 
village near Aix, is considered the finest in France. 



8 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

He renews his suit in the most fervid and per- 
suasive terms ; and, when he is again tenderly 
repulsed, grows keenly reproachful, and hints 
at toils and sufferings undergone for her sake, 
which he scorns to dwell upon in detail. Is she 
a woman, he demands at length, or is she Ester- 
ello, the fairy who is said to haunt that mountain 
region, teasing men with her loveliness, luring 
them to her pursuit, but always eluding them 
in the end ? And she replies, in sad jest, that 
she is Esterello; and can never reward, however 
she may return, any mortal love. Then she in- 
vites him to a grotto hard by, where the stalac- 
tites weep perpetual pearls. 

" And this, my friend," she in her dreamy way, 

" Is Esterello's palace! Look, I pray, 

At these fair hangings! God himself," said she, 

" Wrought all this foliage of white jewelry 

The rainfall feeds. Wilt try my leaf couch here? 

My only seat, — but heights are ever drear. 

" Is it not sweet here? This most quiet spot 
The raging heats of summer enter not, 
But all is cool. ' ' He took the leafy seat ; 
She dropped upon her knees beside his feet ; 
And the strange light that flooded all the place 
Clothed them, as in one garment, with its rays. 



MISTRAL'S CALEXDAU. 9 

In this becoming attitude the lady tells her 
true story. She was, by birth, a princess of 
Baux, the last representative of one of. the most 
ancient and illustrious houses iii Provence. In 
her impoverished orphanhood, — for only the 
Castle of Aiglun had descended to her out of 
all the vast possessions of her family, — she had 
had many suitors, and had fixed her choice 
upon the least worthy. He w T as a stranger of 
brilliant and commanding, but always sinister, 
appearance,' whom, when benighted in a great 
storm, she had received into her castle, who 
had described himself to her as Count Severan, 
an adventurer of high birth, with a large secret 
following, by the help of which he intended one 
day to avenge upon a corrupt government the 
wrongs of their beautiful province, and who had 
completely subjugated the fancy of the young 
girl. Their banns were hastily published, and 
the night of their wedding-feast arrived ; but, as 
the bridegroom presented the guests, one after 
another, by high-sounding but wholly unfamiliar 
names, the bride noted with terror that they had 
more the air of come (that is, the overseers of 
gangs of galley slaves) than of gentlemen. A 



10 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

scene of furious revelry ensued ; but, while the 
bridegroom was in the midst of a pompous 
oration, there forced his wa} r into the brilliant 
hall an unbidden guest. 

He stopped midway of his insensate boast ; 

For in the open doorway rose a ghost, 

An old, most miserable, coarse-clad man, 

Down whose gannt cheeks the grimy sweat-drops ran, 

The threshold crossed of that high banquet-hall, 

And stood, a loathly shape, before us all. 

White turned the bridegroom, and a deadly ray 
Leaped from his eyes as he the steps would stay 
Of the strange comer ; but it might not be. 
Forward he came silently, solemnly, 
As when God takes a beggar's shape sometimes 
The rich man to confound amid his crimes. 

With slowly-trailing steps he neared the host, 

And scanned him long, with lean arms tightly crossed; 

Till on the breast of each expectant one, 

Great terror fell as with a weight of stone. 

An icy wind blew from the night, and flared 

The festal lamps, and at last some one dared 

To break the silence with a brutal sneer : — 

" Ho for a famine, this cursed land to clear 

Of beggar vermin ! or in four more days 

We are devoured! " " What dost thou in this place, 

And with this bridal pair, old fool? " they cried. 

The insulted stranger not a word replied. 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAU. 11 

Then some began to jeer his hairless pate, 
His bloodshot eyes, and heavy, shambling gait: 
" Were it not better, thon ill-omened bird, 
To hide thy glum face in thy hole? " He heard, 
And still unmurmuring each affront he took, 
Yet on the host bent one beseeching look. 

But others: " Come, old fellow, these fine folk 
Are not worth minding ! They must have their joke, 
But do thou glean about the board! Make haste, 
And snatch a joint or carcass where thou mayst ; 
Look! Are thy jaws not equal to a chine 
Of pork? Or wilt toss off a cup of wine? " 

" Nay, masters," answered wearily and slow 
The wan intruder; " you'll not tempt me so, 
For I want no man's leavings. I am here 
To seek my son." " His son? 'Tis mighty queer! 
Why, pray, should this old snakeskin vender's son 
Be haunting the fine lady of Aiglun? " 

There was a base doubt in the mocking look 
Of them, which stung, and I could illy brook. 
But still they plied him: " Tell us which he is, 
This son of thine, and tell the truth in this, 
Or from the gargoyle of the highest tower 
Of old Aiglun thou 'It dangle in an hour! " 

Then the old man: " Behold, I am denied! 

Spurned like the sweepings of the floor aside ! 

Now shall ye hear the raven croak! " quoth he, 

And rose up in his rags right awfully. 

' ' Hold ! ' ' cried the count, ' ' out with him from the hall ! ' ' 

Stony his face, and pallid as the wall. 



12 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

" Fall on him, valets! Hunt the spectral thing 1 " 

Two tears, that I can yet see glistening, 

Hot, bitter tears, in aged eyes and weak, 

Rose, and rolled down the beggar's furrowed cheek. 

Heart-rending memory! Pale as death we grew, 

While he took up his broken tale anew. 

" I am, like Death," he moaned, " of all forgot! 
Yet comes he to the feast, though bidden not. 
Oh, ay, and woe is me! I fain once more 
Would see my son. He drives me from his door. 
1 Fall on him ! Hunt him ! ' says he in his ire ; 
Thou haughty bridegroom, I am still thy sire." 

The beggar then turns upon the horrified 
bride, and denounces his unnatural child to her 
as a base-born churl, a common robber, a mur- 
derer. None dares dispute, or seeks to detain 
him as he turns to leave the hall, save the lady 
herself, who, in her first revulsion of feeling, 
springs forward, calling the old man father, and 
praying him to stay. He puts her aside with a 
pitying prophecy, and she swoons away. Awak- 
ing late in the night, she finds herself in her 
own chamber, with only her old nurse mourn- 
ing over her. The castle is still. She collects 
her thoughts ; realizes the ruin that has befallen 
her life ; thanks God that she is, at least, the 
wife of Severan only in name ; and resolves to 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAR. 13 

fly, leaving her ancestral home in the possession 
of the banditti below. After long wanderings 
and many privations, she had made herself a 
kind of hermitage on this Mount Gibal, at the 
southern extremity of Provence, where she had 
ever since lived a mysterious and ascetic life, 
accounted a supernatural being by the peas- 
antry who caught occasional glimpses of her. 
Here Calendau, the brave young fisherman from 
Cassis on the beach below, had lono; since found 
and loved, and sought to woo her, although 
himself regarding her with a kind of supersti- 
tious awe. Hence, after the fantastic fashion 
of the ladies of old, she had sent him forth to 
deeds of high emprise, which he had achieved 
one after another ; returning to lay his trophies 
at her feet, and only now, after many such 
adventures, to learn that his lady returned his 
love, and to hear her tragic story. 

She ceased. As one who from an evil dream 
Awakes, Calendau rose, fist clenched, a gleam 
Of fury in his eyes. u Xo longer fear 
Thy bandit lord ; but think that I am here, 
Adore, and will release thee! He or I, 
I swear it by the fires of lull, shall die." 



14 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

But she : ' ' Ah no ! Thine eyes affright me more 
Than ever he. Go not ! Stain not with gore 
Our sinless love! " " Nay, but his life must end! " 
" Am I not then thy sister, thy sweet friend? 
Oh, leave me not! " He answered sullenly, 
" I have one only word: The wretch shall die, — 

" Being a robber and accurst. And, oh! 

Thou knowest full well whether I love or no." 

u I will no murderer's love ! All undefiled 

The hand I take must be." He said, and smiled, 

" Princess, fear not! This hand hath ne'er a stain, 

And white for thy dear sake it shall remain. 

" Not as a felon will I seek his death, 

But as one brave another challengeth, 

I will appease my wrath! Alone, breast bare, 

I will go down into the tiger's lair, — 

God grant my foot slip not ! — and once within 

Will smite amid his band this new Mandrin. 1 

" Farewell, my queen! " He said, and made one dash, 
Swift as the swamp-fire's gleam, the lightning's flash, 
Forth of the grot, then paused. She, at his side, 
" Thou goest to thy death! " in anguish cried. 
" Cannot love stay thee? Art thou mad to brave 
Twenty fierce outlaws in their highland cave? " 

1 Mandrin, a famous brigand chief, was born in 1715, at 
Sainte-Etienne-de-Geoire, in Dauphiny, and broken on the 
wheel at Valence, in 1755. 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAU. 15 

" Yea, were there twenty thousand in their stead, 
I would not strike my sail! Behold," he said, 
< ; Love is my strength, —what better following? " 
Adown the mount he plunged with valiant spring, 
Flung back his vest as the bold Gascons do, 
And turned him to far lands and conflicts new. 

The third canto opens with a rapid account 
of Calendau's journey across Provence. It is a 
series of pictures, each brilliant, distinct, and 
harmonious in coloring ; a lovely panoramic view. 
M. Mistral had shown himself a master of this 
kind of painting in those cantos of Mireio which 
describe the muster of the farm laborers, and the 
flight of the heroine across La Crau and Cam- 
argue. We cull a stanza here and there. 

Afar over the sage-fields hummed the bees, 
Fluttered the birds about the sumac-trees. 
How lucid was the air of that sweet day ! 
How fair upon the slopes the shadows lay ! 
The ranged and pillared rocks seemed to upbear 
Levels of green land, like some altar-stair. 

O'er the sheer verge the golden pumpkin hung 
His heavy head, the rock-born aloes flung 
Its flowery rays abroad like God's own lustre. 
Deep in the dells, full many a coral cluster 
The barberry ripened. The pomegranate red 
Beared like an Indian cock its crested head. 



16 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

As Calendau drew near his lady's ancestral 
home, he asked of all he met the way to the 
Castle of Aiglun. 

" cheery plowman, in thy furrow toiling, 
O merry pitch-man, thy sweet resin boiling, 
How far from this to old Aiglun? " he cried. 
" Climb, gallant, climb! " the laborers replied; 
" Then down the deepest chasm, if so be 
The horrid heights no terror have for thee." 

So he went down the deep, chill, darksome vale. 
The frowning precipice well-nigh made fail 
Even his high heart. There the unwilling day 
On snake and lizard flings one noontide ray, 
Then hides behind the cliff. The gorge along 
Tumbles in foam the angry Esteron. 

Presently, however, the defile widened ; giv- 
ing to view an open space, where Calendar came 
suddenly upon the self-stjded count himself, 
surrounded by some thirty or forty of his fol- 
lowers, both men and women. The outlaws 
were reposing after the fatigues of the chase, 
and taking their noonday lunch upon the sunlit 
turf. The intruder is of course ordered to 
stand and deliver ; but his beauty attracts the 
women, and his boldness the men. The count 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAU. 17 

himself sees in the audacious stranger a possible 
recruit ; and the end of it all is that he is invited 
to share their repast, on condition that he will 
tell his story, and declare his business there. 
Calendau asked no better. His tale, he says, 
is one of love, and of many labors wrought in 
the hope of rendering himself worthy of his 
lady's distinguished favor. Some say that lady 
is a fairy, Esterello by name ; and it is certain 
that she lives alone in a wild solitude, that her 
beauty is more than human, and her thoughts 
and visions too high for earth. At all events, 
he will call her Esterello. 

The next six cantos are occupied chiefly with 
Calendau's recital of his own exploits. After 
each feat performed, he seeks his lady in her 
retreat, but finds her for a time ever harder and 
harder to win. The strenuous and often rude 
action of the hero's narrative is beautifully 
broken and relieved by the moonlight quiet and 
mystery of these scenes upon the mountain. 
Other themes are also introduced, which both 
lighten the monotony of grotesque or stern ad- 
venture, and assist in preserving the continuity 
of the main story : the irrepressible comments 

2 



18 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

of Calendau's listeners ; the wonder and some- 
times incredulity of the men ; the sentimental 
admiration of the women ; and, on the part of 
Severan himself, the secret suspicion, early 
aroused and constantly strengthened, that Cal- 
endau's austere and angelic lady-love is none 
other than his own fugitive bride, of whom he 
had never been able to obtain a trace. He 
chooses, however, to allow the young enthusiast 
to finish his tale, both that he may become pos- 
sessed of the fullest possible information, and 
also that he may have time to mature some 
perfectly effectual plan of vengeance on the 
two. 

Calendau begins by telling them that his own 
birth was humble. He came of honest and 
thrifty fisherfolk from Cassis, on the Mediter- 
ranean coast, and he cannot help lingering lov- 
ingly over some of the details of his simple early 
life. 

i ' I would you once had seen the goodly sight, 
The Cassis men under the evening light! 
And in the coo], when they put out to sea, 
Hundreds of fishing craft go silently 
And lightly forth, like a great flock of plover, 
And spread abroad the heaving billows over. 



MI STRAUS CALENDAU. 19 

" And the wives linger in the lone doorways, 
Watching, with what a long and serious gaze ! 
For the last glimmer of the swelling sail. 
And if the sea but freshen, they turn pale; 
For well they know how treacherous he is, 
That cruel deep, — for all his flatteries. 

" But when the salt sea thunders with the shocks 
Of rude assault from the great equinox, 
And bits of foundered craft bestrew the shores, 
Then can we naught but close our cottage doors, 
And young and old about the warm fireside 
Wait the returning of the summer-tide. 

" Ah! those were evenings, — when the autumn gales 
Blew loud, and mother mended the rent sails 
With homespun thread; ay, and we youngsters too 
Were set to drive the needle through and through 
The gaping nets, and tie the meshes all 
There where they hung suspended on the wall. 

" And in his tall chair by the ingle nook 
My father sat, with aye some antique book 
Laid reverently open on his knee. 
And ' Listen, and forget the rain,' quoth he, 
Blew back his mark, and read some tale divine 
Of old Provengal days, by the fire-shine." 

But Calendau asks pardon for dwelling on 
these scenes of childhood. Manhood had begun 
for him when he met his lady in the forest. He 



20 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

had first thought to win her with gold, and had 
undertaken to make himself rich by the difficult 
and dangerous tunny-fishing of the Mediter- 
ranean coast, in which immense fortunes are 
sometimes made. The fifth canto of the poem, 
La Madrago, describes this exciting sport. The 
sketch is one of great power, and has a kind of 
restless brilliancy. Many local legends and 
wild superstitions of the coast are introduced ; 
yet it is intensely real. We give the passage 
which describes Calendau's crowning success : — 

" But when with dawn the pallid moon had set, 
The whole unnumbered shoal into the net 
Came pouring. Ah, but then I was elate! 
Drunk with my joy, thought I had conquered fate ; 
1 Xow, love,' I said, ' thou shalt have gems and gems; 
I'll spoil the goldsmiths for thy diadems ! ' 

" Love is the sun, the king of all this earth: 
He fires, unites, fulfils with joy, gives birth, 
Calls from the dead the living by the score, 
And kindles war, and doth sweet peace restore. 
Lord of the land, lord of the deep, is he, 
Piercing the very monsters of the sea 

" With fire-tipped arrows. Lo the tunny yon! 
Now in one silver phalanx press they on ; 



MI STRAUS CALENDAU. 21 

Anon they petulantly part and spring, 
And plunge and toss ; their armor glittering 
Steel-blue upon their crystal field of fight, 
Or rosy underneath the growing light. 

" 'Twas nuptial bliss they sought. What haste! What 

fire ! 
With the strong rush of amorous desire 
Spots of intense vermilion went and came 
On some, like sparkles of a restless flame, 
A royal scarf, a livery of gold, 
A wedding robe, fading as love grew cold. 

" So at the last came one prodigious swell; 

And the last line, that seemed invincible, 

Brake with the pressure, and our boats leaped high. 

' Huzza ! the prey is caged ! ' we wildly cry ; 

* Courage, my lads, and don't forget the oil! 

The fish we have, — let not the dressing spoil! 

" ' 'Bout ship! ' We bent our shoulders with a will; 
Our oars we planted sturdily but still ; 
And the gay cohort, late alive with light, 
Owned, with a swift despair, its prisoned plight; 
And, where it leaped with amorous content, 
Quivered and plunged in fury impotent. 

" ' Now then, draw in ! But easy, comrades bold; 
We are not gathering figs ! ' l And all laid hold 

1 Eico n'es pas defigo bourjassoto. A popular proverb signi- 
fying " It is no trivial matter." The bourjassoto is a species of 
black fig. 



22 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

With tug and strain to land the living prize, 
Fruit of the treacherous sea. In ecstasies 
Of rage our victims on each other flew, 
Dashing the fishers o'er with bitter dew. 

" Too like, too like our own unhappy people, 
Who, when the tocsin clangs from tower and steeple 
Peril to freedom and the land we cherish, 
Insensate turn like those foredoomed to perish, 
Brother on brother laying reckless hand, 
Till comes a foreign lord to still the land. 

" Yet had we brave and splendid sport, I ween; 
For some with tridents, some with lances keen, 
Fell on the prey. And some were skilled to fling 
A winged dart held by a slender string. 
The wounded wretches 'neath the wave withdrew, 
Trailing red lines along the mirror blue. 

4 ' Slowly the net brimful of treasure mounted ; 
Silver was there, turquoise and gold uncounted, 
Rubies and emeralds million-rayed. The men 
Flung them thereon like eager children when 
They stay their mother's footsteps to explore 
Her apron bursting with its summer store 

" Of apricots and cherries." 

The wealth thus suddenly acquired, Calendau 
spends with ostentatious profusion. He ap- 
points a fete at Cassis, to be celebrated with 
public games, boat-racing, and trials of strength, 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAU. 23 

and promises largess to the crowd. He then 
buys the costliest trinkets, fit only for a queen's 
casket, and proceeds to offer them to his Ester- 
ello, by whom they are refused with a sort of 
gentle disdain. She reminds him that she has 
no further use for jewelry; and that the field 
flowers are, for her, a far more appropriate gar- 
niture ; and she reproves his shallow confidence 
and youthful vanity. Still further mortification 
awaits him at the Cassis fete, to which the next 
canto is devoted, and where he had anticipated 
a public ovation : but where certain comrades, 
who are jealous of his prosperity, overcome him 
by treachery in the games, and poison the minds 
of his townsfolk against him. Wounded and 
sore, both in body and mind, he repairs again 
to his fair recluse, and this time she is kinder. 

" I came once more unto my lady's eyrie. 

Heart hot with sense of wrong and limbs a-weary, 

And oh, the rest I found there, and the balm! 

Coolness as of clear water, and a calm 
Celestial. ' Oh entreat me pityingly, 
My strange white Fay,' I said; ' no gems have I 

" ' For thee to-day. One only laurel-bough, 
Thick set with thorns, is all I offer now; ' 



24 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

And so I dropped under the shady trees, 

And told her of my hard- won victories — 

All barren — and my shame; and she, grave-eyed, 

Looked np and listened from the grass beside." 

Then she tells him a thrilling story, or rather 
chants him a ballad, out of that legendary lore 
of Provence with which her memory is stored, 
and on which, in her solitude, her imagination 
is ever brooding. We give it entire : — 

At Aries, in the Carlo vingian days, 

By the swift Rhone water, 
A hundred thousand on either side, 
Christian and Saracen fought till the tide 

Ran red with the slaughter. 

May God foref end such another flood 

Of direful war ! 
The Count of Orange, on that black morn, 
By seven great kings was overborne, 

And fled afar, 

Whenas he would avenge the death 

Of his nephew slain. 
Now are the kings upon his trail ; 
He slays as he flies ; like fiery hail 

His sword-strokes rain. 



MISTRAL'S CALEXDAU. 25 

He hies him into the Aliscamp, 1 

Xo shelter there ! 
A Moorish hive is the home of the dead ; 
And hard he spnrs his goodly steed 

In his despair. 

Over the monntain and over the moor, 

Flies Count Guillaume; 
By sun and by moon he ever sees 
The coming cloud of his enemies ; 

Thus gains his home, 

Halts, and lifts at the castle gate 

A mighty cry, 
Calling his haughty wife by name: 
" Guibour, Guibour, my gentle dame, 

Open! 'TisI! 

" Open the gate to thy Guillaume. 

Ta'en is the city 
By thirty thousand Saracen, 
Lo ! they are hunting me to my den. 

Guibour, have pity! " 

But the countess from the rampart cried : 

u Xay, chevalier, 
I will not open my gates to thee ; 
For, save the women and babes," said she, 

" Whom I shelter here, 

1 The Aliscamp; that is, Elysii Campi, — an ancient ceme- 
tery near Aries, supposed to have been consecrated by Christ 
in person. 



26 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

" And the priest who keeps the lamps alight, 

Alone am I. 
My brave Guillaume and his barons all 
Are fighting the Moor by the Aliscamp wall, 

And scorn to fly ! " 

" Guibour, Guibour, it is I myself ! 

And those men of mine 
(God rest their souls!) they are dead," he cried, 
" Or rowing with slaves on the salt sea-tide. 

I have seen the shine 

" Of Aries on fire in the dying day; 

I have heard one shriek 
Go up from all the arenas where 
The nuns disfigure their bodies fair, 

Lest the Marran wreak 

" His brutal will. Avignon's self 

Will fall to-day! 
Sweetheart, I faint; oh, let me in 
Before the. savage Mograbin 

Fall on his prey! " 

" I swear thou liest," cried Guibour, 

' l Thou base deceiver ! 
Thou art perchance thyself a Moor 
Who whinest thus outside my door, — 

My Guillaume, never! 

" Guillaume to look on burning towns, 

And fired by — thee ! 
Guillaume to see his comrades die, 
Or borne to sore captivity, 

And then to flee ! 



MI STRAUS CALENDAU. 27 

" He knows not flight ! He is a tower 

Where others fly ! 
The heathen spoiler's doom is sure, 
The virgin's honor aye secure, 

When he is by! " 

Guillaume leapt up. his bridle set 

Between his teeth, 
While tears of love, and tears of shame, 
Under his burning eyelids came, 

And hard drew breath, 

And seized his sword, and plunged his spurs 

Eight deep, and so 
A storm, a demon, did descend 
To roar and smite, to rout and rend, 

The Moorish foe. 

As when one shakes an almond- tree, 

The heathen slain 
Upon the tender grass fall thick, 
Until the flying remnant seek 

Their ships again. 

Four kings with his own hand he slew, 

And when once more 
He turned him homeward from the fight, 
Upon the drawbridge long in sight 

Stood brave Guibour. 

11 By the great gateway enter in, 

My Lord! " she cried, 
And might no further welcome speak, 
But loosed his helm, and kissed his cheek, 

With tears of pride. 



28 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

The docile Calenclau goes on his way inspired 
and heartened. His next feat is to scale Ven- 
tour, the most precipitous peak in Provence, 
hitherto considered inaccessible ; and he signal- 
izes his achievement by felling a grove of larches 
on the very crest of the mountain. The diffi- 
cult ascent is very graphically described : — 

* ' Savage at once and sheer, yon tower of rocks ; 
To tufts of lavender and roots of box 
I needs must cling ; and as my feet I ground 
In the thin soil, the little stones would bound 
With ringing cry from off the precipice, 
And plunge in horror down the long abyss. 

" Sometimes my path along the mountain face 
Would narrow to a thread : I must retrace 
My steps and seek some longer, wearier way. 
And if I had turned dizzy in that day, 
Or storm had overtaken me, then sure 
I had lain mangled at thy feet, Yentour. 

" But God preserved me. Rarely as I strove 
With only death in view, I heard above 
Some solitary sky-lark wing her flight 
Afar, then all was still. Only by night 
God visits these drear places. Cheery hum 
Of insect rings there never. All is dumb. 

" Oft as the skeleton of some old yew, 

In a deep chasm, caught my downward view, 



MI STRAUS CALENDAU. 29 

* Thou art there ! ' I cried ; and straightway did discover 
New realms of wood towering the others over, 
A deeper depth of shadows. Ah, methought 
Those were enchanted solitudes I sought ! 

" From sun to sun I clambered, clinging fast 
Till all my nails were broken. At the last — 
The utter last, oh palms of God! — I caught 
The soft larch-murmur near me, and, distraught, 
Embraced the foremost trunk, and forward fell, 
How broken, drenched, and dead, no words can tell! 

" But sleep renews. I slept; and with the dawn 
A fresh wind blew, and all the pain was gone, 
And I rose up both stout of limb and glad ,* 
Bread in my sack for nine full days I had, 
A drinking-flask, a hatchet, and a knife 
Wherewith to carve the story of my strife 

" Upon the trunks. Ah! fine that early breeze 
On old Ventour, rushing through all the trees ! 
A symphony sublime I seemed to hear, 
Where all the hills and vales gave answer clear, 
Harmonious. In a stately melancholy 
From the sun's cheerful glances hidden wholly 

" By the black raiment of their foliage 

The larches rose. No tempest's utmost rage 

Could shake them; but, with huge limbs close entwined, 

Mutely they turned their faces to the wind ; 

Some hoar with mould and moss, while some lay prone 

Shrouded in the dead leaves of years agone. 



30 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

" A sudden fear assailed my spirit bold : 
' O kingly trees ! ' I cried; ' hermits old! 
All hail, and pardon ! And thou too, Ventour, 
Long steeled the tempest's torment to endure, 
Wilt thou not howl in all thy caves to-day 
Because thy stately crown is rent away ? ' 

u But now the deed is done, the battle dared. 
Mightily swings the axe, and rent and scared 
Are the millennial slumbers of the place 
Mightily cleaves the iron relentless ways 
Along the wood, and every resinous scale 
Weeps drops of gold ; but these shall not avail 

" To stay the slaughter. A heart-rending shriek 
Springs, as the great trunk parts, from root to peak; 
From bough to bough quivers a dying groan, 
As falls the monarch headlong from his throne, 
And thunders down the vale, spreading about 
Tumult and din, as of a water-spout." 

Not content with the havoc thus wrought in 
the forest solitudes, and the consternation ex- 
cited in the valley below, and heedless even of 
the blandishments of a certain lady of Maltbrun, 
who desires to regale and refresh him in her 
highland castle after his exploit, Calendau next 
assails what is called the Honeycomb-rock, — a 
series of clefts and fissures where the mountain 
bees have been for ages depositing their honey 



MI STRAUS CALENDAU. 31 

undisturbed, — and barely escapes with his life 
from the consequences of this last piece of bra- 
vado. But when he approaches Esterello once 
more, bearing a larch bough and a slice of honey- 
comb as his trophies, he finds her rather amused 
than overawed by his latest achievement. She 
cannot help praising his prowess, and half re- 
lenting to his fantastic fidelity ; but she declares 
her fervent and somewhat mystical belief, that 
the solitudes of Nature are sacred, and that he 
who wantonly invades and violates them de- 
serves a severe punishment. She reminds him 
once more that her beloved heroes of old fought 
to redress human wrong, and mitigate human 
suffering, and tries to awaken him to a higher 
ideal of life and love. Count Severan can hardly 
restrain himself at this stage of the story. 

" ' Go then in peace,' she said, ' and if one day 
A man and knight indeed thon coni'st my way, 
Then,' — with a sndden smile, — ' then I will tell 
Whether I fonnd thy honey sweet ! ' Ah well, 
Bright seemed the word, and kind, and the day bright, 
And the birds sang, and the stream leapt in light. 

" * So, at the last, thou hadst her ? ' Severan 
Burst forth. ' Thy tale is growing tedious, man.' 



32 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

1 Pardon, my gracious lord ! ' Calendau cried, 
* And deign a little longer to abide ; 
'Twere base to cheat your honor of the rest, 
Seeing my story's end will be its best! ' " 

In the eighth canto, Calendau signalizes his 
devotion to a loftier ambition, by interposing 
between two hostile bands of freemasons, whom 
he finds one day engaged in a fierce and san- 
guinary fight; and, finally, by common consent 
of the parties, arbitrating and restoring peace 
among them. The theme hardly seems a very 
poetic one, but it is treated with the dignity 
which never forsakes Mistral ; a deal of strange 
and sombre history, or rather mythology, is in- 
troduced, and the rival claims and bizarre pre- 
tensions of the children of Hiram and Solomon 
are detailed with a certain weird pomp. Again 
Severan interrupts Calendau's narrative fiercely 
and scornfully, and with a wrathful side-glance 
at the listeners who hang upon his lips. 

" At least they named thee their Grand Chief, I hope, 
Their master, king, — whate'er they call it, — pope," 
Hissed Severan. " Nay," was the tranquil word, 
" Nor pope, nor king, nor general; but, my lord, 
Provence and Aquitaine, do not forget, 
Will one day give me a name nobler yet, — 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAU. 33 

11 < He who won Esteretto.' " " Oh, have done! " 

The huntresses 'gaii clamor, all as one ; 

' ' Xor look that look that freezes all our blood ! ' ' 

For now, with lifted eyes the hero stood, 

And sweet and misty was their gaze afar, 

Like his who sees a vision or a star. 

And dow Calenclau goes on to relate how he 
addressed himself to the most perilous and un- 
selfish of all his undertakings ; the achievement 
of which brings the reader to the commence- 
ment of the story. There was a certain brigand 
named Marco Mau, the pest and terror of all 
southern Provence, much as Severan himself 
was of the north. Xo hearth or home or sanc- 
tuary, or life of man or chastity of woman, was 
safe from the violent .assaults of this ruffian and 
his armed band ; and him Calendau, at the head 
of a small picked company, tracked, defied, be- 
sieged in his stronghold, and finally slew. Of 
course, he won the enthusiastic gratitude of his 
towns-people and countrymen in general, and 
they became eager to make amends for all the 
petty jealousies of the past, and whatever injus- 
tice they had previously done him. In the great 
city of Aix he was received like a prince, and 
rare civic honors were bestowed upon him. And 



34 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

when he enters the lists at the Fete-Dieu, and is 
proclaimed victor in one after another of the 
strange, antique games which characterize that 
festival, the enthusiasm of the people mounts 
to the highest pitch, and Calendau himself is 
filled with a sacred joy aud gratitude, as unlike 
as possible to the vain exultation of his earlier 
daj^s. He knows that his present honors and 
popularity have been well won, by hard and 
beneficent service, and he thinks his Esterello 
must approve him at the last. We are now at 
the crisis of the story, and the interest deepens 
rapidly. 

" What maudlin tales these foreigners do spin! 
Is it not supper- time ? " once more brake in 
Count Severan. " Come hurry to the end! 
For whither, boaster, does thy prowess tend ? 
Thou hast not won her yet ! So much I know, — 
And others will yet reap where thou didst sow! " 

" ' Will reap!' What mean you, scoundrel? storm and 

war!" 
Cried the young fisher, in tones louder far 
Than e'en the bandit's, and more awesome still; 
" But I have won her! Laugh or weep who will! 
My plume is flying free, and I can guide 
Full well the stormy clouds whereon I ride ! 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAU. 35 

" I would that you had seen my lady bright, 
As once again I climbed her balmy height. 
' To-day they named me Chief of Youth,' I said. 
Flamed in her cheeks two roses of deep red, 
And her throat swelled, and in her glorious eyes 
I saw the lucent, loving tears arise. 

" Ay, and I drank those tears ! And from that hour, — 

Whether it be yon nectar's wondrous power, 

I know not, — but my doubts, my fears, are dead. 

The flowers bloom, look you, wheresoe'er I tread; 

And wheresoe'er I turn my blessed vision, 

The land is all one scene of peace Elysian. 

" The sky seems vaster than it did of old; 
And I can hear the concords manifold 
In Nature's varying voices. And I know 
Why the winds cry aloud or whisper low; 
Why strives the angry sea, and by what token, 
Weary and sad, retires with pride all broken. 

" For, hearken what she said, this queen of mine: 
* Xow is my soul, Calendau, wholly thine, 
Only my body must I keep mine own ; 
But thee I love, my knight, and thee alone! 
'Twere sweet, — and why stay I my steps like this, 
Nor rush with open arms to utmost bliss? 

" ' Now shalt thou know! A treacherous bond,' cried she, 

4 And yet invincible, constraineth me: 

I am an outlaw's wife.' " " Ho! not so fast ! " 

The huntsmen jeered. " The rocket bursts at last 

But the poor women trembled where they sate, 

Yearning o'er him who thus had sealed his fate. 



36 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

While lie — Calendau — cast his cap aside, 

Leapt up, " And that same impious bond," he cried, 

" By the good grace of God, I break to-day! 

Yet if I fall, let not my slayer say 

I am abased; for what I have, I ween, 

Is bliss enough, — an ocean deep, serene, 

" As heaven itself ! E'en Death shall powerless prove, 

And break his horns against our mighty love. 

Fair as the day my lady's body is, 

And yet the whitest pearl of rich Ganges 

A boar may swallow. She I dare call mine 

Is but the angel whom that pearl doth shrine. 

" The low, the evanescent love of sense 
Is but a madness : it has long gone hence. 
I love my sister's soul, and enter there, 
And come and go, and all I see is fair. 
Oh, never painter lived who could retrace, 
Even in symbol, that angelic grace! 

" O ye unspeakable joys of the spirit, 
Ye are the paradise true souls inherit ! 
Ye are indeed the purifying fires 
Wherein love loseth all its low desires. 
O oneness wonderful ! Accord complete, 
Tender and piercing, sad because so sweet ! 

' ' Death shall erelong to marble turn our frames ; 
But the twin thought of us, the inseparate flames 
Of divine essence, by the self -same road 
Shall journey to the Infinite of God! 
The one adored, the one who doth adore, 
Giving and taking blessing evermore." 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAU. 37 

Thus the enraptured youth, like the brave sower 
Who goes forth full of hope the rude fields o'er, 
And sows broadcast, on all the stony plain 
And hard, his sacred and life-giving grain. 
Large drops his forehead beaded; but his smile 
With faith was radiant and content the while. 

And they who Jieard him dumbly felt a thrill, 
Born of that zeal divine, unwonted steal 
Through all their frames, and hearkened eagerly 
As the mule pricks his ears when he sees fly 
The sparks from off the anvil. But the view 
Of that clear river of love, for ever new, 

Incapable of stain, marriage of soul 

Made but for heaven, that smiles at Death's control, 

Stirred to its utmost spite one felon heart ; 

And scowling Severan, where he sat apart, 

While hate burned like a blister at his breast, 

Brooded revenge with feverish unrest ; 

Yet held, as with a leash, his passions in, 
Muzzled like ravening dogs, until his spleen 
Took shape. " Calendau hath won all things now, 
The aureole is growing round his brow; " 
So his thought ran. " Of heaven he is sure, 
And there of honor bright and favor pure. 

" He hath her soul! He is become as God! 
Xow, though the lightning lay its fiery rod 
Upon him, and his frame be ground to dust, 
He is not dispossessed of that fair trust: 
He hath her soul, and what to him is death? 
Ha ! ha ! I'll break the sword and leave the sheath ! 



38 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

" By the insidious poison of a bliss 

More deadly than all pain, that soul of his 

I will make one corruption ! Ay, the germ 

Of yonder tree of life shall feed the worm ! 

And were thy baser passions tighter reined 

Than now, proud youth, thy doom were still ordained." 

With this infernal thought the count arose, 
Blandly a signal gave, and all of those 
About set forth together for Aiglun, 
Climbing the tortuous torrent- side. The sun 
Set suddenly behind the mountain- wall, 
And swift and sombre 'gan the night to fall. 

Till from the east the early moon did peep, 
As a maid, risen from her couch of sleep, 
Her lattice opes, the coolness to inhale. 
The crickets chirred incessant in the vale ; 
And, where the onion-fields lay black in shade, 
The courtil-mole trilled forth her long roulade. 

Rarely from far above the piercing cry 
Of some belated quail fell mournfully, 
Or a young partridge in the vale astray 
Whimpered afar. And cooler grew alway 
The air, until the deep'ning shades of night 
Were cloven by the bat's precipitous flight. 

The eleventh canto, The Orgie, is devoted to 
the fulfilment of Severan's sinister design, and 
it reveals a wholly new aspect of M. Mistral's 
versatile genius. The inconceivable luxury of 



MISTRAL'S CALENDAU. 39 

the bandit's castle, the costly profusion of the 
garden feast, the music, the tempered light, the 
heavy odors, and the artfully intensified beauty 
of the women, whom Calendau seemed hardly 
to have heeded before, — are all described in dic- 
tion infinitely voluptuous, and with an effect of 
sensuous splendor and enchantment hardly at- 
tainable in a Northern tongue. The revelry, 
restrained at first to a certain languorous meas- 
ure, grows faster, while from time to time the 
lurid scene is relieved by glimpses of the sum- 
mer night scenery, with what effect those will 
readily understand who remember the peaceful 
light of sunset sky and sea around the fierce 
duel of the rivals in Mireio. 

There were swift clouds abroad that night, and dark, 
Hiding the moon at times. The restless spark 
Of myriad fire-flies, like an emerald shower, 
Quivered in all the air. And hour by hour 
Warmer the night turned, and heat lightnings parted 
From the far heights, and through the ether darted. 

And if the mad mirth failed, at intervals 
Sounded distinctly all the waterfalls 
And tinkling fountains ; and anon there came 
Dashes of cooling spray to cheeks aflame. 
For a cascade that plunged adown the hill, 
By art compelled, with many a silver rill 



40 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Threaded the pleasance ; seeming now asleep, 
Then, hurrying to a verge, with one gay leap, 
Dispersed in diamond rain, it passed from view. 
Only the grass below right verdant grew, 
And loveliest flowers, jasmine and the tuberose, 
Freighted the dark with sweets, — how sweet to those 

Hot revellers ! And the cantharides 

Shook their keen odors from the great ash- trees. 

At last the host : ' ' And are ye satisfied 

With feasting? Ho then for a dance! " he cried. 

" Young, rosy limbs in play I hold a sight 

Aye worth the rapture of a gallant knight." 

There followed one of those intoxicating and 
lascivious dances indigenous in the neighbor- 
hood of Marseilles, and parent of the Carma- 
gnole and more modern abominations. In the 
midst of it, Calendan finally shakes off his gath- 
ering stupor, and challenges Severan to instant 
and mortal combat. A scene of frightful con- 
fusion ensues ; but the struggle is, of course, a 
brief one : Calenclau is overpowered by numbers, 
bound, and flung into a dungeon, and his torture 
exquisitely enhanced by the assurance that 
Severan and his troop, following the clue fur- 
nished by Calendau's story, will set forth that 
very night to capture and bring back, alive or 
dead, the lost lady of Aiglun. From this dun- 



Ml STRAUS CALENDAU. 41 

geon lie is released, at early daybreak, by For- 
tuneto, the youngest, fairest, and tenderest of 
the unhappy slaves whose allurements he had 
resisted the night before, and he flies to the 
defence of his lady. He is only just in season. 
The " cornice-like ledge," where we saw them 
first, forms a kind of natural fortress ; and there 
the young lover, informed with the valor of ten, 
holds the troop at bay for one long twent} T -four 
hours, and at last disables so many that they re- 
treat, but only to set fire to the w r oods that 
girdle the mountain. A terrible night ensues, 
during which the two can do no more than wait 
for death together ; but, when the first rays of 
dawn are struggling with the lurid flames and 
stifling smoke, the bells are suddenly heard to 
rinsr in Cassis and all along the shore. The 
rumor has spread that Calendau, the darling 
and benefactor of the coast, is in uttermost peril ; 
and the whole population turns out to fight the 
flames. The strange battle is made sufficiently 
thrilling and dubious, although the reader fore- 
knows its end. Severan is killed by the fall of 
a burning trunk, and — 

Two thousand souls, a people in its might, 
Engage the roaring fires in sturdy fight, 



42 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Felling a pathway to the mountain-crest, 
Just as the sun leaps up to flood the east 
With radiance; and the child of yonder wave 
Aod the white fairy of the highland cave — 

He with his nostrils wide to the pure morn, 
She with the torrent of her bright hair borne 
Downward, like jujube flowers — stand forth together, 
The glory of the blue bejewelled weather 
Flung like an arch triumphal o'er the twain. 
Hand in hand on the height they hear again 

And yet again exultant shouts ascending — 
Two thousand voices in one psean blending — 
" Hail to Calendau! who hath brought renown 
And praise of men to our poor fishing-town ! 
Who hath won Esterello I Plant the may 
For him who is our consul from to-day ! ' ' 

The happy crowd therewith in triumph bear 
Forth of their citadel the rescued pair, 
The tried, the true, the blest beyond desire; 
While the sun, which is God's own realm of fire, 
Goes up his dazzling way with blessing rife, 
Calling new lovers and new loves to life. 

So happily ends the poem. The brief abstract 
here given conveys a very inadequate idea of 
the abundance of incident, the range of tone, 
and the immense variety of action by which it 
is characterized. Where nearly every page is 
strikingly picturesque, selection becomes a diffi- 
cult task. 






THEODORE AUBANEL : A MODERN 
PROVEN9AL POET. 

' I ^HE ideal Mutual Admiration Society has 
its head-quarters in the south of France. 
Such clumsy endorsements as people with a 
common literary cause elsewhere afford one an- 
other are contemptible indeed beside the fervent 
felicitations, the ascriptions of honor, the prayers 
for a common immortality, the vows of eternal 
faith and mutual self-abasement, to which the 
Felibres of the Bouches-du-Rlwne are treated 
among themselves. The felibres are the whole 
school of modern Provencal poets of which 
Joseph Roumanille is founder and master, and 
Frederic Mistral facile princeps ; and no Gentile 
seems to know precisely why they are called or 
call themselves by this name. The very ety- 
mology of the word is disputed ; some asserting 
that it means merely quifacit libros, others that 
it is homme de foi libre, and that the word, from 
being applied to the apostles in ancient prayers, 



44 TROUBADOURS AND TROU VERES. 

has been adopted by the apostles of the Proven- 
gal revival, as indicating the breadth of their own 
views, and the novelty — if the word may be 
pardoned — of their literary and perhaps political 
departure. It should be said, however, that 
this last is not the explanation of a friend, but 
of a deserter, M. Eugene Garcin, who is the 
author of a very curious and not very amiable 
little book entitled, " Les Frangais du Norcl et du 
Midi," and whom M. Mistral himself does not 
hesitate to call " The Judas of our little church." 
The etymology is not perhaps of very much 
account. These men are self-styled felibres ; 
and the felibre Anselme Matthieu sings to the 
felibre Joseph Roumanille, and the felibre Theo- 
dore Aubanel to the felibre Jan Brunet, and 
all together, as well they may, hymn the praises 
of M. Mistral, who, in his turn, invokes them 
all (and the faithless Garcin among them), like 
a choir of masculine Muses, in the fifth canto 
of Mireio ; while to one of them, Theodore 
Aubanel, who forms the subject of this article, 
and who undoubtedly ranks next to Mistral 
in originality and beauty of gifts, the latter has 
furnished a more formal and very characteristic 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 45 

introduction to the world. Nor, with the glow- 
ing pages before me of Mistral's fanciful preface 
to Aubanel's poems, can I bring myself to pref- 
ace the versions which I have made from the 
less famous minstrel by any dry record of the 
few known facts of his history. I prefer to let 
the one poet present the other, as he did to the 
French public, and must beg the kindly reader 
to regard this new candidate for favor, and his 
sad and simple story, less through the dim 
medium of my own translations than by the 
rose-light of the generous praises of his enthusi- 
astic superior. Aubanel's book is called " La 
Miougrano Entredouberto : The Opening — or 
Half Open — Pomegranate." The coincidence 
of the name with that of one of Browning's early 
volumes, and of Mistral's interpretation of it 
with Miss Barrett's of the latter, is a little 
singular. This is the Avant-propos. 

I. 

" The pomegranate is by nature wilder than 
other trees ; it loves to grow in the broad sunshine 
among heaps of stones, afar from men and near 
to God. There, solitary as a hermit and brown 



46 TROUBADOURS AND TROU VERES. 

with the sun, it shyly unfolds its blood-red 
flowers. Love and sunlight fertilize the blos- 
soms, and in their rosy cups mature a thou- 
sand coral seeds, a thousand pretty sisters nest- 
ling under the same coverlet. 

" The SAVollen pomegranate keeps concealed, 
as long as may be, under its rind the beautiful, 
rosy grains, — the beautiful, bashful sisters. 
But the wild birds of the oak-barrens cry to 
the pomegranate-tree, ' What wilt thou do with 
tlry seeds? Autumn and winter will soon be 
here to drive us across the hills and over the 
sea. Shall it be said, thou wild pomegranate- 
tree, that we left Provence without seeing the 
birth of thy coral seeds, the eyes of thy bashful 
daughters ? ' 

" Then the pomegranate-tree, to satisfy the 
eager birds, slowly opens its fruit. The ver- 
milion grains flash in the sun ; the timid girls 
with their rosy-cheeks peep out of the window. 
The giddy birds assemble in flocks and gayly 
feast upon the fair coral seeds ; the giddy 
suitors devour with kisses the fair, bashful 
maidens." 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 47 

n. 

"Theodore Aubanel — and when you have 
read his book you will say the same — is a wild 
pomegranate-tree. The Provencal public, which 
liked his earliest songs so well, has been savins; 
of late, ' What is our Aubanel doing, that we 
no longer hear his voice ? ' 

" Aubanel was singing in secret. Love, that 
sacred bee whose honey is so sweet in its own 
time and place, and which, when crossed, can 
sting so sharply, — love had buried in his heart 
a keen and pitiless arrow. The unhappy passion 
of our friend was hopeless ; his malady without 
remedj r . His beloved, the maiden who had 
crossed the clear heaven of his youth, — alas, 
she had become a nun ! 

" The poor soul wept seven years for his lady 
and is not yet consoled. 

" To drive away the fever which consumed 
him, he left Avignon, committing himself to 
God. He saw Rome; he saw Paris; with the 
barb still in his side, he came back to Provence. 
He climbed mountains — Sainte Baume, Ven- 
tour, the Alps, the Alpilles. But his rose had 



48 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

shed its leaves ; thorns only remained, and none 
might strip them off." 

in. 

" Nevertheless, from time to time the swell- 
ings of his passion overflowed in poesy. He 
had taken for his motto, — 

" ' Quau canto 
Soun mau encanto.' l 

And whenever he felt a stab of regret the poor 
child gave a cry. 

" And these plaints, these cries of love, at the 
earnest instance of us his friends, — the birds of 
the oak-barrens, — Theodore Aubanel has con- 
sented to publish under the charming title of 
the ' Book of Love.' 

" The ; Book of Love ' is thus, strange to say, a 
song in good faith, a genuine flame. The story, 
as I have said, is perfectly simple. It is that 
of a youth who loves, who languishes afar from 
his beloved, who suffers, who weeps, who makes 
his moan to God. Holding his story sacred, he 
has not changed it. All is here as it happened, 

1 He who sings enchants or charms away his sorrow. 



THEODORE AUBAXEL. 49 

or better than so, for from his virgin passion, 
his weariness and despondency, his weeping 
and his cries, a book all nature has arisen, — 
living, youthful, exquisite." 

IV. 

"If ever in April you have passed along the 
hedge-rows, you know the odor of the haw- 
thorn. It is both sweet and bitter. 

" If ever in early May you have scented the 
evening coolness under the light green trees, 
you know the song of the nightingale. It is 
clear and vivid, impassioned and pure, plaintive 
but full of power. 

" If ever in June you have seen the sun set 
from the ramparts of Avignon, you know how 
the Rhone shines under the old bridge of Saint 
Benezet. It is like the mantle of a prince, red 
and radiant, torn with lances, — it floats, it 
flames. 

" I can think of no better comparison for the 
64 Book of Love.' Nor do I think it too much 
to say that the coral seeds of the opening pome- 
granate will henceforth be the lover's chaplet 
in Provence." 

4 



50 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 



V. 

" After the 'Book of Love' comes the 'In- 
tergleam.' 

" It is quite natural. If you have a hedge of 
roses, lilacs, or myrtle, it is hardly possible but 
that it should be interspersed with shoots of 
blackthorn, periwinkle, and honeysuckle. And 
observe the sea, when it is beaten and churned 
and tormented by the north- wind ; there will be 
found, amid the tumultuous billows, bright rip- 
ples which reflect the sun. 

" So, amid the impassioned love-songs of 
Theodore Aubanel, there are a few pleasant, 
peaceful, consoling strains. So in the tempest 
of his emotions there are transient gleams of 
fair weather. 

" Truly the lucid interval is short. But the 
more severe the attack, the more vigorous the 
reaction. The strain is broken ; or at least 
the young man believes for an instant that it 
is so, and lo, with what ardor he drinks at the 
cool springs of serene, majestic Nature ! He 
quaffs the sunshine like a lizard ; his nostrils 
expand to the soft breathings of the forest airs. 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 51 

Does he sing of reapers ? He seems himself to 
grasp the sickle. Of fishermen ? 'T is he who 
flings the net. And if he celebrates nuptials, he 
fairly leaps with joy. You would say that he 
was himself the bridegroom." 



VI. 

" But the lightning of the storm-cloud is only 
temporary. The trouble of the heart again makes 
darkness in the soul. 

" When Raimbaud de Vacqueiras was so 
madly enamoured of Beatrix, the sister of Mar- 
quis Boniface de Montferrat, and dared not tell 
her so, this is the song which he made in his 
despair : — 

" ' No ni'agrad iverns ni pascors 
NI clar terns, ni folk de games ; 
Car mos enans mi par destrics 
E totz miei major gautz dolors; 
E son maltrach tut miei leger 
E desesperat miei esper ; 
Qu' aissi m' sol amor e domneis 
Tener gai comal'aiga 1' peis: 
E pois d'amdui me soi partitz 
Com horn eissilhatz e marritz 



52 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Tot autre bida m' sembla mortz 
E tot autre joi desconortz.' 2 

" So might Aubanel of Avignon have said. 
When Zani, the brunette, fled from Avignon, 
as the tender and virginal snow vanishes from 
the hill before the breath of the fine days, — fled 
in fear from the burning breath of her felibre, 
his heart fainted within him. And now, if you 
care to know, all sunshine became heavy mist 
to him, all merriment sad, all life death. Then 
in the gloom of his spirit, tear by tear, he wrote 
the ' Book of Death.' The seven sorrows are 
there ; the seven knives of the Pieta have 
pierced the pages. All that suffers is as his own 
soul ; all that causes suffering, his mortal hor- 
ror. And so harrowing, so harsh, so real are 
the pictures which he paints, that it would seem 
as if the poet, violently robbed of his love (like 
a tree whose spring buds have been torn away), 

1 Neither winter nor Easter pleases me, nor clear weather, 
nor foliage of the oak. For my gains seem to me crosses, and 
all my greatest joys pains. And all my idle hours are anguish, 
and all my hopes despair. Ordinarily, love and gallantry are to 
me as the water to the fish. But now, since I have lost these 
two, like a miserable and exiled man, I find all other life death, 
and all other joy desolation. 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 53 

had resolved to be avenged for his cruel fate, by 
chastising all the instruments of cruelty, — all 
the tyrannies in the world." 



VII. 



" So much by way of explaining the principle 
on which this volume is divided. I have not 
taken my place upon the threshold to say ' Come 
and see ! ' nor to laud that which can speak for 
itself. And we poets are neither gold nor sil- 
ver; it is impossible that we should please all. 
I would merely point the way of refreshment 
to those who thirst." (Frederic Mistral.) 

And now for some specimens of the " Book of 
Love." Each song has a motto from some old 
poet, usually Provencal or Italian. A line from 
Countess Die heads the first : " E mernbre nos 
qual fo V comensamens de nostr* amor" 1 

Hast thou, like me, the thought before thee 

Forever of a morning fair, 
When, by a wayside oratory, 

Thou didst put up thy simple prayer; 

1 Remember how our love began. 



54 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

A prayer of faith and sweetness olden, 
And I, who chanced to pass that way, 

Unto thy angel voice beholden, 
Was fain, heart-full, my steps to stay ? 

Here, by the qniet water kneeling, 
Where the old willow leans to drink, 

" Fair cross and dear," thou saidst, appealing, - 
The place is vocal yet, I think! 

" O sacred rock of ours, 

Fair cross and dear, 
Are not the wild- wood flowers 

All offered here ? 

" Wilt thou not, Jesus, hear 

The song-bird small? 
Thou whose blood runneth clear, 

Like brooks, for all ? 

" Thou, who didst overcome 

Dark purgatory, 
Lead us into thy home ! 

Lend us thy glory ! " 

This was the end. Then I, heart-laden 
And fearful, drew the cross anigh. 

" That was a lovely prayer, O maiden, 
Wilt thou not teach it me ? " said I. 

And, lady, thou didst not repel me, 
But straightway turned with aspect sweet, 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 55 

Thy simple orison to tell nie, 
As a bird doth its song repeat. 

An ancient prayer, and good ! Ah, surely 

The men of old were holiest ! 
I say it oft, I say it purely, 

I think of thee, and I am blest. 

There follow a few happy little lyrics, one 
rapturous, another dreamy. The poet sings of 
his lady's smile ; he sings of her quiet grace in 
the dance ; he sings, with a touch of awe, of 
her readiness for all good works, as in this pe- 
culiar and lingering stanza : — 

This is a sorry world, and some are tired of living; 

So may the dear Lord go with thee 
Wherever mourners are ! Thou dost assuage their grieving ; 

Thou lovest all in misery. 

The old and gray who travel wearily, 

All who lack bread, and all who strive and sigh, 

Each motherless little one, 
Mothers whose little ones are in the sky, — 
~No pain is pain the while that thou art by ! 

Thou sayest, " Poor dear! " in such a tone! 

Then the poet's key changes, and he suddenly 
breaks into passion in a song beginning, " Thy 



56 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

little warm, brown hand — give it me!" and 
furnished with a motto from that fiery and ill- 
fated troubadour, Guillaume de Cabestaing. But 
equally abrupt is the ensuing transition. The 
next motto is that line from the a Inferno " which 
we all know : " We read no more that day." 
And: this is the number : — 

"'T is the last time!' ' " What meanest thou? " " I must 
go!" . . . 
" Whither? " " Ah yes, I am to be a nun." 
" What sayest thou, dear? Why dost thou fright me so? 
Thou must be ill ! Thy youth is scarce begun ! 
Beware of thy own heart, my little one ! 
Thou art not ill? Then thou hast struck me dead ! " 
'T was our last day indeed, and this is all we said ! 

And now the songs of sorrow begin ; at first 
fragmentary and bewildered, and afterwards 
either fierce in their resistance to pain, or breath- 
ing a deep and quiet despondency like the 
following : — 

Far, far away across the sea, 

In the still hours when 1 sit dreaming, 
Often and often I voyage in seeming ; 

And sad is the heart I bear with me 

Far, far away across the sea. 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 57 

Yonder, toward the Dardanelles, 
I follow the vessels disappearing, 
Slender masts to the sky uprearing ; 

Follow her, whom I love so well, 

Yonder toward the Dardanelles. 



With the great clouds I go astray ; 

These by the shepherd wind are driven 
Across the shining stars of heaven 

In snowy flocks, and go their way; 

And with the clouds I go astray. 

I take the pinions of the swallow, 
For the fair weather ever yearning, 
And swiftly to the sun returning ; 
So swiftly I my darling follow 
Upon the pinions of the swallow. 

Homesickness hath my heart possessed, 
For now she treads an alien strand ; 
And for that unknown fatherland 

I long, as a bird for her nest. 

Homesickness hath my heart possessed. 

From wave to wave the salt sea over, 
Like a pale corpse I alway seem 
On floating, in a deathlike dream, 
Even to the feet of my sweet lover, 
From wave to wave the salt sea over. 



58 TROUBADOURS AND TROUV&RES, 

Now am I lying on the shore 

Till my love lifts me mutely weeping, 
And takes me in her tender keeping, 
And lays her hand my still heart o'er, 
And calls me from the dead once more. 

I clasp her close and hold her long, 
" Oh, I have suffered sore," I cry, 
" But now we will no longer die! " 

Like drowning men's my grasp is strong; 

I clasp her close and hold her long. 

Far, far away across the sea, 

In the still hours when I sit dreaming, 
Often and often I voyage in seeming ; 

And sad is the heart I bear with me 

Far, far away across the sea. 



Twice the poet makes his way into chambers 
which his lady has inhabited at different times 
before she forsook the world. In one he be- 
seeches the little mirror to show him once more 
the pictures it has reflected so often : his lady 
at her toilette, at her prayers, " reading in the 
old prayer-book of her grandfather until she 
marks the place with a blessed spray and kneels 
and talks a long while to God," plaiting her 
abundant hair, or in all the simple glories of 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 59 

her gala-day dress. Upon the wall of the other 
he leaves this verse inscribed : — 

Ah, chamber poor and small! 
However canst thou hold so many memories? 
Passing thy sill, each pulse within me cries, 
' ' They come ! those two bright girls men used to call 
Julia and Zani! " Then my heart replies 

1 ' Nay, all is over — all ! 
Here never more sleep lights on their young eyes, 
For heaven hides one — and one, a convent wall." 

Presently other troubles overtake the poet. 
The home of his boyhood is desolated by his 
mother's death, and he sets forth on a series of 
aimless journeyings, from the record of which 
I quote : — 

Aye, since my mother died and Zani went away, 
I wander high and low ; I wander all the day ; 
No comrade at my side my own sad whim to guide, 
Until Avignon's towers once more I have descried. 

Then turn I, smitten by a sudden bitterness. 
Why should I seek again the home of my distress? 
Now I can pass no more before my darling's door, 
Nor feel my mother's arms around me as of yore. 
I '11 seek some other land, if one perchance there be, 
Whose children do not mourn eternally. 



60 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

So ever since the dawn thou hast travelled heedless on. 
And at eventide thou comest unto a hamlet lone, 
Deep in some unknown valley, very green and fair ; 
Already, through the dusk, tremble the stars in air ; 
The dog begins to bay, and the homely fowl to talk ; 
And the house-mother, yonder beside the garden-walk 
Tying her golden lettuce, pauses and lifts her eyes. 
" Give thee good even, friend! " and " Good even! " she 

replies. 
" Whither so late ? " " I *m weary, and have missed my 

road," thou sayest; 
44 Might I rest under thy roof ? " " Ay, surely, that thou 

mayest ! 
Enter, and sit thee down! " Then she heaps the hearth 

with boughs, 
And a garment of red firelight makes merry all the house. 
" Yon whistle is my man's! He will soon be coming up 
From the plowing ; wherefore, friend, we will together 

sup! " 
She scans her stew, and cuts her loaf, and makes all haste 

to bring, 
In her goodly copper jug, fresh water from the spring, 
Calling her scattered brood ere the door-sill she has 

crossed. 
They come. The soup is poured; and while it cools, the 

kindly host 
Brings thee his home-made wine. Then offers each his 

plate, — 
Sire, grandsire, mother, child, — and thou sharest their 

estate, 
Eatest their bread, and art no longer desolate! 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 61 

Sleep lies in wait for all or ever the meal is o'er. 

So the housewife lights a lamp and brings thee, from her 
store, 

A sheet of fair white linen, — sweet and coarse and clean. 

The languor of the limbs is the spirit's balm I ween; 

Oh, good it is to sleep in the sheep-fold on the ground, 

Dreamless under the leaves, with the dreamless flock 
around, 

Until the goat-bells call thee! Then to live as shep- 
herds do, 

And smell the mint all day as thou liest under the blue. 

But if the poet found temporary rest of body 
and soul by the homely hospitable firesides of 
his native land, it was far otherwise when he 
had extended his wanderings to foreign coun- 
tries and stood awe-stricken amid the ruins of 
the Eternal City. Then his heart-sickness re- 
turned upon him overpoweringly ; and he sang, — 

Rome, with thine old red palaces arow, 
And the great sunlight on thy highways beating, 
Gay folk, and ladies at the windows sitting, — 
They may be fair, — I am too sad to know! 

I have climbed Trajan's column, and saw thence 
The Quirinal here, and there the Vatican, 
The Pope's green gardens; how the Tiber ran 
Yellow under its bridges, far, far hence; 



62 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

And, lifted mountain-like the pines above, 
Saint Peter's awful dome. — Ah me, ah me! 
Saint Peter of Avignon I would see 
Blossom with slender spire from out its grove ! 

Here were Rome's ancient ramparts, — quarried stone 
Crumbling, fire-scarred, with brambles matted thick; 
There, the huge Coliseum's tawny brick, 
The twin arcs hand in hand. But there is one 

In mine own country, I saw clearer yet. 
Thou art the Aries arena in my eyes, 
Great ruin ! And my homesick spirit cries 
For one I love, nor ever can forget. 

And still, as from my watch-tower, I discerned, 
Out in the waste Campagna, errant flocks 
Of horned bulls tossing their fierce, black locks 
As in our own Camargue, the thought returned, 

Why dost thou not forget? Thou thought 'st to leave 
By land, by sea, some portion of thy woe; 
But time is wasting, and thy life wears low, 
And ever more and more thou seem'st to grieve. 

With the first return of spring after his. mis- 
fortunes, the poet finds himself back in Provence, 
lying by a brookside, while there rings in his 
ears that charming verse from the " Rouman de 
Jaufre " in which the birds " warble above the 
young verdure, and make merry in their Latin : " 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 63 

Violets tint the meadows o'er, 
Swallows have come back once more, 
And spring sunshine like the former, 

But rosier, warmer ; 
Leafage fair, the plane-tree decking, 
Shadows all the wood-ways flecking: 

Mirth unrecking, 

Heavy heart, 
Here hast thou no part ! 

On the green bank of the river 
Low I lie, while o'er me quiver 
Lights and odors, leaves and wings, 

All glad things. 
Blossoms every bough are haunting, 
Everywhere is laughing, chanting, 

~Ro joy wanting: 

Heavy heart, 
Here hast thou no part ! 

In and out each rustic porch, 
Flocks of maidens, fair and arch, 
Full as nightingales of song, 

Futter, throng, 
Chase each other, pull the clover; 
Each hath tales of her own lover 

To tell over : 

Heavy heart, 
Here hast thou no part ! 

Now, for very mirth of soul, 
They will dance the f arandole. 
Dance on, mad-caps, never noting 
Hair loose floating ; 



64 TROUBADOURS AND TRO UTERES. 

Rosy-faced your races run, 
Through the dwarf-oaks in the sun: 

Heed not one, 

Heavy heart, 
That hath here no part. 

Two and two, with hands entwining, 
Dance, until the moon is shining! 
I and mine dance never more. 

That is o'er. 
my God, the sweet brown face! 
Shall yon dreary convent-place 

Quench its grace? 

Heavy heart, 
Here hast thou no part ! 

And so on, for more pages than one cares to 
quote, or even to read consecutively, tuneful 
though they are. The fancies are infinite, but 
the mode never changes, nor the theme. Quaint 
little pictures of Provencal life keep flitting 
across the background of Aubanel's sorrow, their 
brightness intensified by the surrounding gloom, 
— as when the sunshine falls on a landscape 
from behind a storm cloud. At last there comes 
a motto from the " Imitation," — " Quia sine do- 
lore, non vivitur in amove" — followed by a sort 
of prayer recording the poet's rather forlorn en- 
deavor to reconcile himself to the strange system 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 65 

of chastening and disappointment which he finds 
prevailing in the world. And so ends the " Book 
of Love." 

In the series of twelve poems which M. Mistral 
has rather fantastically christened the " Entre- 
luisado," or " Intergleam," or " Lucid Interval," 
the poet tells us little about himself, but we learn 
to love him better, perhaps, than before, for the 
real breadth and warmth of his human sym- 
pathies. Some of his themes are homely almost 
to the verge of coarseness, and treated with a 
frankness quite troublesome to reproduce. The 
attempt is made with two of them. The first is 
called 

THE TWINS. 

What say est thou? there are two more now, 
And we were beggars before? Hey-day! 
'T is God hath sent the twain, I trow, 

And shall they not be welcome, pray? 
Two boys! But 't is a pretty brood! 

Observe how sweet they are! Ah, well, 
Soon as the birdling breaks the shell 
The mother still must give it food ! 

Come, babies, one to either side! 
Mother can bear it, 
Xever fear it ! 
Her boys shall aye be satisfied ! 



66 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

There '11 never be too many here ; 

I 'd rather count my flock by pairs ! 
I always find it time of cheer 

When a new baby hither fares. 
Two? Why, of course! I ask you whether 

My pair the cradle more than fills? 

And, by and by, if God so wills, 
Can they not go to school together? 
Come, babies, etc. 



My man 's a fisher. He and I 

Have had seven children. And, indeed, 
God helps poor folk amazingly — 

Not one has ever died of need ! 
And now, what do you think? Our kids 

Have only had those fishing-nets 

Out yonder, of my Benezet's, 
And my own milk, for all their needs. 
Come, babies, etc. 

Sometimes the blessed nets will break ; 

God sends too many fish, I say. 
And then must I my needle take 

And mend, some livelong, leisure day. 
He sells them living, then. Such freaks ! 

They fairly leap the basket out ! 

And this is why, beyond a doubt, 
My young ones have such rosy cheeks. 
Come, babies, etc. 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 67 

In summer, when the streams are low, 

And naught to catch the Rhone along, 
My maD outstrips them all who row 

From Barthelasse to Avignon; 
And makes our living thus, instead; 

There is no wolf beside our door, 

But in the cupboard aye a store, 
And every hungry mouth is fed. 
Come, babies, etc. 

Are they so marvellous, my twins? 

Is one by one the usual way 
With mothers? Well, that only means 

I am of better race than they ! 
Two in ten months! Come, Benezet, 

Here 's work for thee, my brave old man. 

What I have done, not many can; 
So haste and fill the blessed net ! 
Come, babies, etc. 



My gossips murmur solemnly, 

" Xora, thou canst not rear them both. 
They '11 drain thy life, as thou wilt see; 

Put one away, however loath ! ' ' 
Put one away! That would be fine! 

I will not, — so! Come, dearies, come; 

In mother's arms there aye is room, 
Her life 's your living, lambkins mine! 
Come, babies, etc. 



68 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

The other, which is addressed to Mme. Cecile 
Brunet, the wife of one of the sacred felibres, 
is, in the original, wonderfully like a " Nativity" 
by some innocent old master. It seems a " Na- 
tivity " of the Dutch school, however, and the 
wonder is that the author of the sad and tender 
lyrics in the " Book of Love " can write of any 
thing with so small an admixture fif sentiment. 
In this case only I have departed from the metre 
of the original to the extent of shortening each 
line by one foot. I did not know how else to 
indicate, in our comparatively stiff and sober 
tongue, the babyishness, the nursery-rhyme char- 
acter, of the original. 

Room for this tiny creature ! 

Ere any neighbor goes, 
Let her scan each pretty feature, — 

Wee mouth and comic nose. 

Take, grandame, the new-comer, 
And strike it to bring its breath ! 

He 's red as plums in summer, 
But a lusty cry he hath ! 

The mother is glad and weak ; 

She smiles amid her pain. 
Lay the babe against her cheek ; 

It will make her well again ! 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 69 

And" where is the father? Fie! 

A man with bearded lips 
To hide him awa}~ and cry ! 

Bnt 't is for joy he weeps. 

And tears are good, I know; 

And laughter is good. By these 
We stay life's overflow, 

The full heart getteth ease. 

Here comes a maiden small 

Would kiss her baby brother ; 
But the cradle is too tall — 

Ay, let her have it, mother! 

The house from sill to loft 

Is full of merry din ; 
And the dresser, scoured so oft, 

And the old faience, shine clean. 

And every way at once 

(None kinder and none sweeter) 
Our busy Mary runs ; 

Joy makes her footsteps fleeter. 

Till the guests are gathered all, 

Kinsmen and sponsors twain, 
And for Saint Agricol 

Departs our happy train. 

Choose, maids, your gallants brave! 

Be ready, lads, I pray! 
That clerk nor chaplain grave 

May wait for as to-day. 



70 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

State-robed in nurse's arms, 

Baby before us goes. 
Oh, scan his infant charms, — 

Wee mouth and comic nose ! 

Equally artless and realistic, and wholly local 
in their coloring, are a " Song of the Silk-Spin- 
ners," and a " Song of the Reapers," — the latter 
dedicated to M. Mistral. There is also a pict- 
ure of a Provengal salon, which is rendered 
quite as much for its indirect interest as for its 
intrinsic grace. Observe the essentially musical 
manner in which the two phrases of the simple 
theme are repeated and varied. 

TO MADAME . 



O lady, many a time, at sober eventide, 
In yon cosey bower of thine, the blazing hearth beside, 
Thou hast given me a place. And sure, no otherwhere 
Are kinder folk or brighter tires than there ! 

And at five of summer morns I have risen many a time 
With thee the airy heights of Font Segune to climb ; 
Of fairy Font Segune, delightsome castle, hung, 
High like a linnet's nest, the trees among. 

And so, when winter reigned, I have warmed me at thy 

blaze ; 
And so, when summer burned, I have walked thy shady 

ways; 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 71 

And oft beside thy board, with those little ones of thine, 
I have eaten of thy bread and drunk thy wine. 



And were the nights not fair with wit, 
When those same crackling bonghs were lit? 
And thon, my lady, thou didst sit 

Queen of the home and of us all? 
There flashed the needle's tiny steel, 
There was there laughter, peal on peal, 
And Jules replied to Eoumanille, 

And Aubanel did challenge Paul. 

There gentle damsels came and lent 

The graces of their merriment ; 

Their beauty made our hearts content, — 

The angel of the hearth, Clarice, 
The angel of the poor, Fifine, 
Whose white hands tend the peasant's wean, 
And make the beds all cool and clean, 
Where little sufferers lie at ease. 

Oh, sweet under the foliage, 
When tropic heats of summer rage, 
Of birds to list the gossip sage, 

To list the laughing fountain's tune; 
And when the glowing day is dead, 
And dusky forest ways we tread, 
With the full moonshine overhead, 

Still is it fair at Font Sesnme. 



72 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

And yet I reckon this the best, 
To sit thine honored table guest ; 
And, 'mid the tire of friendly jest, 

To click the glass of good old wine ; 
To take the bread thy friendly hand 
Hath cut; and half to understand, 
That cordial e}^es on every hand 

Do brighter for my coming shine. 



in. 

So all that helps us live, and tunes our courage higher, — 

Sweet looks of kindliest charity, 
Good shade , good hope, good faith, good cheer, good fire, — 

Dear lady, I have found with thee ! 

It were not easy then to tell the whole, — 
If but my lips could sing, as can my soul ! 

Upon the serenity of these domestic and rural 
pictures descend, or are made to descend, ab- 
ruptly, the chills and terrors of the " Book of 
Death." In this final section is undoubtedly in- 
cluded the most powerful writing of our author. 
It opens with a wild and dreary song entitled 
" All-Saints Day," which is interesting as present- 
ing an almost unique picture of late autumn in 
the South. 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 73 

Withered fields and wailing cry 

Of poplars high, 
Wildly flinging their leaves around, 
While the fierce mistral bends like a withe 

The stem so lithe, 
And the tempest mutters along the ground. 

Not a spear of golden grain 

On all the plain! 
Ants are in their holes once more. 
Even the snail draws in his horns, 

And returns 
To his house, and shuts the door. 

On the holm-oak no cicala 

Holdeth gala! 
Dim with frost his mirrors i now; 
Little rustics make their moan 

For mulberries gone 
And birds' nests vanished from the bough. 

Sudden flights of larks are loud 

In the cloud, 
Muttering terror and dismay. 
Huntsmen's echoing shots resound 

All around, 
And their dogs for ever bay. 

1 The two shining and sonorous membranes under the ab- 
domen of the cicala, which produce the noise known as its 
song, are called in Provencal mirau or mirrors. 



74 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

On the hillock there is ruin 

Past undoing. 
Axes ringing on the oak: 
While the charcoal-burner's fire 

Mount eth higher, 
As the north-wind lifts the smoke. 

Lambs to highland pasture straying, 

Or delaying 
In the mead, are met no more. 
Covered are they from the cold 

In the fold, 
And the shepherd props the door. 

Thrifty men ply hammer and plane, 

Else they drain, 
By the ingle, many a flask. 
Girls, under the grain-stack's lee, 

Busily 
Braid the garlic for their task. 

All the woods are sere and dun, 

Where the sun 
Sinks the leafless boughs behind. 
Where the vineyard's prunings lie 

Silently, 
Toiling women fagots bind. 

But the poor are they who gather 
Dead wood, rather, 

Or for bark the forest range ; 

Else in scanty rags and dreary, 
Barefoot, weary, 

Stroll the hamlet, haunt the grange. 



THEODORE AUBAXEL. 75 

Comes a little shivering maid, 

Half afraid, 
Opes a pallid hand and thin. 
She 's an orphan, and, indeed, 

Faint for need : 
Drop, I pray, an alms therein! 

"When beside the oven bright, 

Loaves are white, 
Think of her whose man is dead, 
Who hath bolted flour no more 

In her store ; 
Xay, whose oven hath no bread. 

Southward, hark, the floods are falling, 

Thunder calling; 
Swells the Rhone in the black weather. 
Hark! the footfall of Death's feet, 

Coming fleet, 
Young and old to reap together ! 

After this ominous and melancholy prelude, 
comes a poem entitled " The Famine," a plain- 
tive hut somewhat monotonous dialogue he- 
tween two hungry bahies and the mother who 
is vainly trying to hush them asleep without 
their supper. The next, "The Lamp," is the 
watch of a mother by her dead child. The 
next is very curious in its solemnity. It is 
called " Lou Treo-en." 



76 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 



THIRTEEN. 

" Touch, for your life, no single viand costly! 

Taste not a drop of liquor where it shines ! 
Be here but as the cat who lingers ghostly 

About the flesh upon the spit, and whines ; 
Ay, let the banquet freeze or perish wholly, 

Or ever a morsel pass your lips between ! 
For I have counted you, my comrades jolly, 

Ye are thirteen, all told, — I say thirteen I " 

" Well, what of that? " the messmates answered lightly; 

" So be it then ! We are as well content ! 
The longer table means, if we guess rightly, 

Space for more jesters, broader merriment. " 
" 'T is I will wake the wit and spice the folly! 

The haughtiest answer when I speak, I ween. 
And I have counted you, my comrades jolly! 

Ye are thirteen, all told, — I say thirteen ! " 

" So ho! thou thinkest then to quench our laughter? 

Thou art a gloomy presence, verily! 
We w^ager that we know what thou art after ! 

Come, then, a drink! and bid thy vapors fly! 
Thou shalt not taint us with thy melancholy ' ' — 

" Nay, 'tis not thirst gives me this haggard mien. 
Laugh to your hearts' content, my comrades jolly; 

Still I have counted, and ye are thirteen ! " 

" Who art thou then, thou kill-joy? What 's thy nature, 
And what thy name, and what thy business here? " 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 77 

" My name is death! Observe my every feature. 

I waken longing and I carry fear. 
Sovereign am I of mourners and of jesters ; 

Behind the living still I walk unseen, 
And evermore make one among the feasters 

When all their tale is told, and they thirteen." 

" Ha! art thou Death? I am well pleased to know thee/' 

A gallant cried, and held his glass aloft; 
" Their scarecrow tales, O Death, small justice do thee: 

Where are the terrors thou hast vaunted oft? 
Come, feast with me as often as they bid thee! 

Our friendly plates be laid with none between." 
" Silence! " cried Death, " and follow where I lead thee, 

For thou art he who makest us thirteen." 

Sudden, as a grape-cluster, when dissevered 

By the sharp knife, drops from the parent bough, 
The crimson wine-glass of the gallant wavered 

And fell ; chill moisture started to his brow. 
Death crying, " Thou canst not walk, but I can carry," 

Shouldered his burden with a ghastly grin, 
And to the stricken feasters said, " Be wary! 

I make my count oft as ye make thirteen." 

It is but just to Aubanel to say that the tinge 
of burlesque, which all our efforts have hardly 
been equal to excluding from this imperfect 
version, is nowhere in the original, which is of 
a truly childlike gravity and intensity. It seems 



78 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

always difficult for one who uses our language 
to depict superstition pure and simple with 
entire seriousness ; and this is, perhaps, espe- 
cially true of the American. The most ardent 
advocates among us of the various forms of 
" spiritualism " in religion, and quackery in 
medicine, are ever driven to make a show of 
supporting their vagaries by a vast pretence of 
scientific arguments, very falsely so called. We 
are, as a nation, wofully wanting in the grace 
of credulity, which few men can make more 
engaging than the Provencal poets. I have 
space for but two more of our author's efforts, 
or rather for my own inadequate reproduction 
of them. The first shall be the famous " Neuf 
Thermidor." Famous it may fairly be called, 
since every one of the author's European critics 
singles it out for mention, some of them in 
terms of extravagant praise. It is easier, how- 
ever, to account for its fascination to a Gaul, 
than to approach in English its very ghastly 
naivete. 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 



THE XIXTH OF THERMIDOE. 

" Thou with the big knife, whither away? " 
" Headsman am I, with folk to slay! " 

" But all thy vest is dabbled with gore, 

And thy hands, — headsman, wash them, pray." 
" Wherefore? I shall not have done to-day! 

I have heads to sever, a many more! " 

" Thou with the big knife, whither away? " 
" Headsman am I, with folk to slay! " 

II Ay, ay! but thou art a sire as well! 
Hast fondled a babe, and dost not shrink, 
Nor need so much as a maddening drink, 

Mother and child at a stroke to fell? " 

" Thou with the big knife, whither away? " 
" Headsman am I, with folk to slay! " 

" But all the square with dead is strewn, 
And the living remnant kneel and sue ! 
Art a man or a devil? Tell us true ! " 

II I 've a stint to finish ! Let me alone ! " 

" Thou with the big knife, whither away? " 
" Headsman am I, with folk to slay! " 

11 Oh, what is the flavor of thy wine? 

And why is the foam on thy goblet red? 

And tell us, when thou bakest thy bread 
Dost thou the savor of flesh divine? " 



80 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

u Thou with the big knife, whither away? " 
" Headsman am I, with folk to slay! " 

1 ' Dost thou sweat? Art thou tired? Why, rest a bit! 

Let not thy shuddering prey go free ! 

For we have no notched knife like thee, 
And this is a woman ! Prithee, sit ! " 

" Thou with the big knife, whither away? " 
" Headsman am I, with folk to slay! " 

u Ha! she is off! And the turn 's thine own! 
On the wooden pillow, musty and black, 
Thy cheek shall lie, and thy sinews crack, 

And thy head — why, headsman, it hath flown! " 

' ' Sharpen the notched knife anew ! 
Sever the head of the headsman too ! " 

There is a long and somewhat elaborate tril- 
ogy concerning the " Massacre of the Inno- 
cents," of which the numbers are entitled, 
" Saint Joseph's Day," " The Massacre," and 
" The Lamentations," which I leave untouched ; 
and the last specimen selected shall be the poem 
with which this strange little volume concludes, 
and where the singer finds again something of 
the pious and plaintive sweetness of his earlier 
notes. It is an invocation to an African Ma- 
donna, dedicated to Mgr. Pavy, the Bishop of 
Algiers, and records the fulfilment (perhaps by 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 81 

way of contributions to the Algerian chapel) 
of some vow once made with reference to the 
poet's unhappy passion. The metre is interest- 
ing, as presenting two among the many varie- 
ties attempted by the Provencals on the original 
strophe of " Mireio," that most rich and musical 
stanza so singularly adapted to the genius of the 
modern Langue d'oc. 1 

OUR LADY OF AFRICA. 

Oh, long with life-blood watered, 
Old Afric, soon or late, that seedshall fructify; 
Saints' blood and warriors' hath for aye 
Made roses beautiful and red, 
That ever blow God's altar by. 

1 Dr. Edward Bohmer, Professor of the Romance Lan- 
guages in the University of Halle, in a small volume entitled 
" The Provencal Poetry of the Present," and full of genial and 
intelligent criticism, says : " This strophe of Mistral's is not 
entirely his own invention. The number of lines, the succes- 
sion of rhymes, and the relative position of the masculines and 
feminines, are to be found in the ' Paouro Janeto ' of the Mar- 
quis de la Faire-Alais, and in a poem by the same, addressed 
'to Jasmin, as the last part of a longer strophe, whose feminine 
lines are of the same length as Mistral's. The latter length- 
ened both the masculine verses to Alexandrines, and thus gave 
epic repose to the energetic and impetuous movement of the 
verse." (" Provencalische Poesie der Gegenwart," p. 36.) The 
reader is referred to the preface to the American edition of 
"Mireio " for an attempt to imitate this stanza in English, and 
to Dr. Bohmer's volume for another, hardly more successful, 
to render it into German. 

6 



82 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

O Rose of Afric, Lady blessed, 
Have pity on our souls distressed ! 
Our land is parched and dead. Ah ! beauteous Rose of 
ours, 
In tender showers impart 
, The dew-drops of thy heart, 
The perfume of thy flowers ! 

A chapel we have builded thee 
Aloft. Oh, let it be a signal and a star! 
Where lonely Arab riders are, 
Where seamen battle with the sea, 
Its rays of comfort shine afar ! 

O Rose of Afric, Lady blessed, etc. 

And ye, under the blinding glow 
Of desert suns, who toil onward through desert sands, 
O caravans in weary lands, 
Make halt where Mary's roses blow, 
Seek shade and solace at her hands ! 

Rose of Afric, Lady blessed, etc. 

Of costly stones and marble all, 
Stately and strong the chapel we have reared so high ; 
Thither as to a home we fly. 
May Afric 's rose grow fair and tall, 
Till on our fane its shadow fall ! 

O Rose of Afric, Lady blessed, etc. 

My vow is paid; my love of yore, 
Virgin, in thy gold censer quite consumed away. 
Xow heal my heart; and save, I pray, 



THEODORE AUBANEL. 83 

All those who sail the waters o'er 
From my Provence to Afric's shore. 

O Rose of Afric, Lady blessed, etc. 

And last I lay tlfis book of mine 
Before thy feet, who art love, life, and hope; and pray 
Thou wilt accept the untaught lay, 
And in some sacred wreath of thine 
My flower of youth and honor twine. 

I have adhered to M. Mistral's arrangement 
of his friend's verses, but cannot refrain from 
expressing my own conviction that, however 
picturesque, it is a somewhat artificial one, and 
furnishes but an imperfect clew to the chron- 
ological order of the poems. In Theodore 
Aubanel, who is, in many ways, a perfectly 
representative child of the South and descen- 
dant of the Troubadours, qualities meet which 
we are not used to see associated. He is both 
soft and fierce. He loves with a devotion, and 
also with a delicacy, as rare as it is affecting. 
He mourns with infantine desperation. He 
hates with a peculiar and almost gamesome 
zest. As compared with Mistral, he has less 
power, whether descriptive or dramatic, but 
more grace, of a certain wild, faun-like charac- 
ter, while he shows barely a trace of the training 



84 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

of the schools. Mistral's simplicity is often 
studied. The ideals of Greek and Roman an- 
tiquity are ever present to his imagination, and 
he avows himself an " humble scholar of the 
great Homer." Many of his critics have noted 
the Homeric character of the refrains in the 
ninth canto of " Mireio," but this is only one 
among many instances. The charming descrip- 
tion of the cup of carved wood which Alari 
offered to Mireio is obviously imitated from 
Virgil's third " Eclogue," as this again is imitated 
from the first and fifth " Idyls " of Theocritus. It 
is greatly enriched indeed, but some, even of 
the details, are precisely similar ; as for example, 
the fact that neither cup had yet been used for 
drinking : — 

" Sentie 'ncaro lou nou, i'avie panca begu." 

and : — 

" Necdura illis labra admovi, sed condita servo." 

And the same is true of the descriptions of the 
public games in " Calendau." But Theodore Au- 
banel is purely indigenous, and need not be 
other than he is, if Greece and Rome had never 
existed. The antecedents of his genius are the 
love-songs and sirventes of the Troubadours, and 
the silence of the last few hundred years. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 

I. 

TT is a little singular that the band of enthu- 
siasts, who style themselves exclusively the 
Provengals and are formally devoted to the ad- 
venture of restoring the Langue d'oc to its place 
in literature, should appear almost unconscious 
of the fact that they were preceded, by about 
twenty-five years, in the self-same fascinating 
path which they have chosen, by one of the 
most careful artists as well as truest poets of 
this century. Jacques Jasmin, the barber of 
Agen, in Gascony, published his first volume 
of dialect poems in 1835, when Frederic Mistral 
was a child of four, hardly old enough to prey 
upon the mulberries and olives of his father's 
rnas, before he had come even under the mild 
restraints of Master Roumanille's school. This 
earliest volume of Jasmin's — called, with a 
mixture of gayety and simplicity quite peculiar 
to himself, " Papillotos, or Curl Papers" — was 



86 TROUBADOURS AND TROin T ERES. 

followed, at intervals of several years, by two 
others. These, like their predecessor, contained 
hosts of those little personal and occasional 
Lyrics, Tributes, Dedications, Thanks for testi- 
monials, Hymns for festivals, which M. Sainte- 
Beuve rather impatiently characterizes as " im- 
provisations obligees " and " compliments en 
madrigaux" and of which Jasmin himself says, 
with something as near an apology as his com- 
plete naivete will allow him, " One can only pay a 
poetical debt by means of impromptus ; and im- 
promptus may be very good money of the heart, 
but they are almost always bad money of the 
head." But among these comparatively trivial, 
though always musical and pleasing pieces, there 
w r ere a half-dozen poems of another and higher 
order : romantic tales in verse of two or three 
or more paouzos (pauses or cantos), noble in 
conception, abounding in action, and wrought 
out with very patient care ; instinct with the 
author's own gentle vivacit} r , and at the same 
time impressive by the dignity of simple, natural 
passion. 

The rustic dialect from which Jasmin never 
departed, he lifted to the level of these more 



JACQUES JASMIN. 87 

serious themes as easily, as triumphantly, as 
Mr. Lowell adapted his extraordinary Yankee 
speech to the tones of keenest pathos, in No. 
X. of the second series of " Biglow Papers ;" 
and more cannot be said. All the magnates in 
criticism of Jasmin's generation came forward, 
soon or late, and surrounded him with their ap- 
plause. Cities and roj-al personages had medals 
struck in his honor. His works were collected in 
a cheap popular edition, of one volume, in 1860, 
a few months only after the Parisian world was 
first electrified by the publication of " Mireio." 
Eight years before this, at a public meeting of 
the French Academy, August 20, 1852, an ex- 
traordinary prize of five thousand francs had 
been awarded to the Gascon poet, and M. Ville- 
main, in a stately address, had declared it to be 
the purpose of that august body also to have a 
medal struck in his honor : " La medaille du 
poete moral et populaire." Earlier yet, Charles 
Nodier had subdued his amazement at the in- 
congruity between Jasmin's calling and his 
genius ; and had begged him, with an air of 
impulsive patronage at once amiable and amus- 
ing, not to intermit the manufacture of peri- 



88 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

wigs; "for this," says the lively Gaul, ever 
intent on his epigram, " is an honest trade ; 
while verse-making is but a frivolous distrac- 
tion." M. Leonce cle Lavergne dwelt, with an 
enthusiasm rather generous in a true Provencal, 
on the onomatopoetic beauties of the Gascon 
patois. M. de Pontmartin classed Jasmin with 
Theocritus, Horace, and La Fontaine, and paid 
him the singular tribute of saying that he had 
made good as attractive as other Frenchmen 
had made evil. Finally, M. Sainte-Beuve Qsalut 
a son dme) warmly yet carefully appreciated 
him. u Away on your snow-white paper wings," 
cries Jasmin merrily to his verses, when he ded- 
icates to the king of critics a new edition of his 
first volume, "for now you know that an angel 
protects you ! He lias even dressed you up 
in fine French robes and put you in the ' Deux 
Mondes ' ! " 

It is to the " Causeries " that the reader must go 
for a complete analysis of Jacques Jasmin's liter- 
ary qualities, and a guide to the more recondite 
beauties of his speech. Here, preceding some 
experiments in translation, an attempt is made 
merely to show some of the points in which his 



JACQUES JASMIN. 89 

works resemble, and some in which they differ 
from, those of that younger school of singers 
in Southern France, a few of whose produc- 
tions have already been reviewed in these 
pages. 

And first, notwithstanding that local "jeal- 
ousy between Gascon and Provencal " which 
M. de Lavergne frankly allows in his admirable 
notice of Jasmin's masterpiece, " Franconette,'' 
there seems to be nothing deliberately disingen- 
uous in the silence of the Provencals about Jas- 
min ; no reason to suppose that their inspiration 
is in any way borrowed from him. These men 
of Southern France were born, one and all of 
them, in the native land of modern poetry, and 
have breathed none but its native air. The 
echoes of all its varied measures, nay, of the 
veiy rhymes which are its distinguishing char- 
acteristic, perpetually haunt their every-day 
talk. They tread its ruins under foot. Its seeds 
lie dormant in all their soil. One such seed 
germinated at Agen, in the first quarter of our 
centuiy ; a handful more about Avignon, twenty- 
five years later. The rich wild flowers which 
they have borne are of the same family, indeed, 



90 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

and have certain fundamental resemblances, but 
they are quite distinct in color, shape, and even 
fragrance. Here is no miracle ; still less, good 
ground for a charge of plagiarism. 

Jasmin is Gascon ; not in the present restricted 
application of the term Provengal ; and his dia- 
lect, though closely allied to that of the Bouches- 
du-Rhone, must, it seems to me, be pronounced 
slightly inferior to the latter in the melod}^ of its 
terminations, and, hence, in its rhythmic capabil- 
ities. But the two sustain the same relation 
to the classic Romance, — that lovely but short- 
lived eldest daughter of the Latin. The Gascon 
poet is at once more conventional in his imagery, 
and less enterprising in the matter of metre, than 
his young neighbors. He uses freely the most ob- 
vious and trite comparisons. Lips are cherry-red, 
teeth snow-white, etc. : whereas the metaphors of 
his juniors are often too quaint to be spontaneous, 
and we know that they know the beaten paths 
by their sedulous avoidance of them. Jasmin 
clings also to the measures most approved in 
legal French poetry, especially to Alexandrines 
and iambic tetrameters, and to their irregular 
association in a sort of ballad metre, which in 



JACQUES JASMIN. 91 

English has been best handled by Robert Brown- 
ing in " Herve Kiel," and indeed most happily 
chosen for that essentially French poem. Mistral 
seized these same irregular iambics, and speedily 
moulded them into the ornate verse which became 
so astonishing a vehicle of varied expression in 
" Mireio" and " Calendau," and upon which his 
followers, in their turn, executed all sorts of vari- 
ations. But Mistral and his felibi*es seem never 
for a moment free from a sense of their high 
commission to repudiate or reform all that is 
distinctively French, and set up in its stead that 
which is distinctively Provencal. They may 
justly claim, most of them, to have made delib- 
erate choice of an humble and rustic form of 
expression, when a more literate one was equally 
at their command; while Jasmin, in all probabil- 
ity, could never have written in learned French, 
and did but sing because he must. Both Jasmin 
and the Provencals have the self-confidence of 
real power; but they are self-confident with a 
difference. When some one told Jasmin that he 
had revived the traditions of the Troubadours, 
" Troubadours ! " he cried, — one can imagine 
with what a lusty peal of laughter, — " why I 



92 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

am a great deal better poet than any of the 
Troubadours ! Not one of them could have 
composed a long poem of sustained interest 
like my ' Frangonette ' ! " Which is perfectly 
true ; but a man, to say it of himself, must 
have a conspicuous absence of small vanity, 
and a considerable sense of humor. While 
the Provencals, though they have doubtless a 
fine audacity and fervid faith with regard to 
the future, speak always with due humility of 
Homer, and are almost preternatural in their 
gravity. 

Sainte-Beuve quotes with keen enjoyment the 
demure yet decided terms in which Jasmin re- 
fused, in 18-19, the challenge of one Peyrottes, 
who had summoned him to contend with him- 
self in one of those poetical tournaments revived 
from the Middle Ages, in which Mistral and his 
colleagues afterwards engaged with enthusi- 
asm, and won many laurels.' " I dare not," 
wrote Jasmin quaintly, " enter the lists with 
you. The courser who drags his chariot with 
difficulty, albeit he arrives at the goal, cannot 
contend against the fiery locomotive of the rail- 
way. The art which produces verses one by 



JACQUES JASMIN. 93 

one cannot compete with manufacture. My 
muse declares herself vanquished in advance, 
and I hereby authorize you to record the de- 
claration." And then, as if sensible and repent- 
ant of a lurking arrogance in his refusal, he adds, 
in a postscript, " I love glory, but the success of 
another never troubles my sleep." And though 
Jasmin's declamations and readings of his own 
poems are said to have been in the highest de- 
gree dramatic and affecting, the spirit of that 
reply was undoubtedly sincere, and his methods 
of composition were such as he describes, — assid- 
uous, quiet, slow. " I have learned," he once 
said, " that in moments of heat and emotion we 
are all eloquent and laconic, alike in speech and 
action, — unconscious poets, in fact ; and I have 
also learned that it is possible for a muse to be- 
come all this wittingly, and by dint of patient 
toil." 

Sainte-Beuve, whose judgments constantly 
recur, sums up all his eloquent praise of the 
Gascon poet by saying that he is invariably 
sober. No doubt, the Provengals proper, even 
Mistral, their greatest poet, — rarely in " Mireio," 
but oftener in " Calendau," — are apt to be tern- 



94 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

porarily the worse for the wine of what they are 
pleased to consider their ethnic inspiration. But 
their interesting careers were hardly begun at a 
time when Jasmin's was rounding to its close, 
and when he was already declared better to have 
fulfilled his promises than any other poet of his 
generation. If thej 7 " can but imitate his simple 
and conscientious devotion to art, and grow as 
he grew even to old age, they will shed an equal 
lustre on that historic land of song which aliens 
will always regard as their common country. 

In no poem of Jasmin's are the most charac- 
teristic qualities of his mind — his candor, his 
pathos, and his humor — -more abundantly shown 
than in that which he has entitled " My Souve- 
nirs," and from which some extracts will now be 
made. He begins the unique story of his life, as 
he is very apt to begin a story, confidentially and 
colloquially : — 

Now will I keep my promise, and will tell 
How I was born, and what my youth befell. 

The poor, decrepit century passed away, 
Had barely two more years on earth to stay, 
When in a dingy and a dim retreat, 
An old rat-palace in a narrow street, 



JACQUES JASMIN. 95 

Behind a door, Shrove Tuesday morn, 
Just as the day flung its black night-cap by, 
Of mother lame, and humpbacked sire, was born 
A boy, — and it was I. 

When princes come to life, the cannon thunder 

With joy ; but when I woke, 

Being but a tailor's son, it was no wonder 

"Not even a cracker spoke. 

Only a certain charivarian l band 

Before our neighbor's door had ta'en its stand, 

Whereby my little virgin ears were torn 

With dreadful din of kettle and of horn, 

Which only served to echo wide the drone 

Of forty couplets of my father's own. 

His father, it seems, was a village poet, a spin- 
ner of doggerel for these charivari ; and this was 
the humble seed which, being mysteriously fruc- 
tified, produced genius in the son. He goes on 
to assure us that, in his coarse and mended 
swaddling-clothes, and sleeping on a little bed 
stuffed with lark's feathers, he grew, if some- 

1 The charivari, so common in the south of France, is a 
terrific uproar produced by kettles, frying-pans, and horns, ac- 
companied by shouts and cries, and the singing of rather low 
songs, which is set up at night, under the windows of the newly 
married, especially if they are in advanced years or have been 
married before. 



96 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

what lean and angular, as fast as any king's 
son, until he was seven years old, and then — 

Suddenly life became a pastime gay. 

We can but paint what we have felt, they say: 

Why, then must feeling have begun for me 

At seven years old; for then myself I see, 

With paper cap on head, and horn in hand, 

Following my father in the village band. 

Was I not happy while the horns were blowing? 

Or, better still, when we by chance were going, 

A score or more, as we were wont to, whiles, 

To gather fagots on the river isles? 

Bare heads, bare feet, our luncheon carrying, 

Just as the noontide bells began to ring, 

We would set forth. Ah, that was glee! 

Singing, The lamb thou gavest me ! 

I 'm merry at the very memory ! 

He goes on to describe with extreme zest, and 
a wonderful richness of local coloring, the im- 
promptu fttes in which he thus bore a part; the 
raids upon cherry and plum-orchards. " I should 
need a hundred trumpets," he says, " to cele- 
brate all my victories ! " And then the dances 
around bonfires, and other fantastic ceremonies 
of St. John's Eve. Then he tells, in words of 
exquisite softness, how the first light shadow 
fell upon his baby spirit : — 



JACQUES JASMIN. 97 

Pathless, I was a dreamy little thing. 

One simple word would strike me mute full often, 
And I would hark, as to a viol string, 

And knew not why I felt my heart so soften : 
And that was school, — a pleasant word enow; 

But when my mother, at her spinning-wheel, 
Would pause, and look on me with pitying brow, 

And breathe it to my grandsire, I would feel 
A sudden sorrow, as I eyed the twain, 
A mystery, a long whole moment's pain. 

And something else there was that made me sad: 

I liked to fill a little pouch I had, 

At the great fairs, with whatso I could glean, 

And then to bid my mother look within; 

And if my purse but showed her I had won 

A few poor coins, a sou for service done, 

Sighing, " Ah my poor little one," she said, 

1 ' This comes in time ; ' ' and then my spirit bled. 

Yet laughter soon came back, and I 

Was giddier than before, a very butterfly. 

So, after fair- time, came vintage with all its 
manifold joj^s ; and then suddenly the winter, 
when, in the dearth of fire-wood, the child was 
fain to sun himself in sheltered nooks while the 
daylight lasted. But " how fair is the nightfall 
of the grim winter day ! " At that hour a score 
or more of women, with their younger children, 
used to assemble in a large room, lighted by a 

7 



98 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

single antique lamp, suspended from the ceiling. 
The women had distaffs and heavy spindles, on 
which they spun a kind of coarse pack-thread, 
which the children wound, sitting upon stools 
at their feet. And all the while, one old dame or 
another would be telling ogreish stories of " Blue 
Beard," " Sorcerer," or " Loup-garou" to fas- 
cinate the ears and trouble the dreams of her 
young auditory. 

At last a winter came when I could keep 

Xo more my footstool ; for there chanced a thing 
So strange, so sorrowful, so harrowing, 

That long, long afterwards it made me weep. 

Sweet ignorance, why is thy kind disguise 
So early rent from happy little eyes? 

I mind one Monday, — 't was my tenth birthday, — 
The other boys had throned me king, in play, 
When I was smitten by a sorry sight : 
Two cartmen bore some aged helpless wight, 
In an old willow chair, along the way. 
I watched them as they near and nearer drew ; 
And what saw I ? Dear God, could it be true? 
'T was my own grandsire, and our household all 
Following. I saw but him. With sudden yearning, 
I sprang and kissed him. He, my kiss returning, 
For the first time, some piteous tears let fall. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 99 

" Where wilt thou go? and why wilt thou forsake 
Us, little ones, who love thee? " was my cry. 
" Dear, they are taking me," my grandsire spake, 
" Unto the almshouse, where the Jasmins die." 
Kissed me once more, closed his blue eyes, passed on. 

Far through the trees we followed them, be sure. 
In five more days the word came he was gone. 
For me, sad wisdom woke that Monday dawn : 

Then knew I first that we were very poor. 

And here the first section of Jasmin's memo- 
ries, which he began to rehearse so gayly, closes 
as with a sob. When he resumes, he seems half 
abashed at the homeliness of the tale which he 
has undertaken to tell. Shall he soften it ? He 
pauses to query. Shall he dress it up with false 
lights and colors ? For these are days when 
falsehood in silk and gold seems always accept- 
able, and the "naked, new-born truth" unwel- 
come. But he repudiates the thought : — 

Myself, nor less nor more, I '11 draw for you, 
And, if not fair, the likeness shall be true. 

That death of his grandfather, he goes on to 
say, sank like a plummet into his heart, and 
seemed for the first time to reveal to him the 
utter squalor of his surroundings. He describes 



100 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

in a minute fashion, at once droll and exceed- 
ingly pathetic, the exposure of their tenement 
to the four winds of heaven ; the ragged bed- 
curtains ; the cracked pottery, and worn wooden 
vessels off which t\\ej ate and drank ; the 
smoky, frameless mirror ; the rickety chairs. 
" Islj mother explained it all," he says : — 

Xow saw I why our race, from sire to son, 

For many lives, had never died at home; 

But time for crutches having come, 

The almshouse claimed its own. 

I saw why one brisk woman every morn 

Paused, pail in hand, my grandame's threshold by : 

She brought her, not yet old, though thus forlorn, 

The bread of charity. 
And ah, that wallet! by two cords uphung, 
Wherein my hands for broken bread went straying, — 
Grandsire had borne it round the farms among, 
A morsel from his ancient comrades praying. 
Poor grandsire ! When I kept him company, 
The softest bit was evermore for me ! 



All this was shame and sorrow exquisite. 
I played no more at leap-frog in the street, 
But sat and dreamed about the seasons gone. 
And if chance things my sudden laughter won, — 
Flag, soldier, hoop, or kite, — it died away 
Like the pale sunbeam of a weeping day. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 101 

However, there was a happy change at hand : 
and here, unhappily for his translator, the poet 
abandons his flowing pentameters ; but one must, 
if possible, keep step with him : — 

One morn my mother came, as one with gladness crazed, 
Crying, " Come, Jacques, to school! " Stupid, I stood and 

gazed. 
u To school! "What then? Are we grown rich?" I cried, 

amazed. 
" Nay, nay, poor little one! Thou wilt not have to pay! 
Thy cousin 1 gives it thee, and I am blessed this day." 

Behold me, then, with fifty others set, 

Mumbling my lesson in the alphabet. 

I had a goodly memory ; or so they used to say. 

Thanks to this pious dame, therefore, 

'Twixt smiles and tears it came to pass 

That I could read in six months more; 

In six months more, could say the mass; 

In six months more, I might aspire 

To tantum ergo and the choir; 

In six months more, still paying nothing, 

I passed the sacred college gate ; 

In six months more, with wrath and loathing, 

They thrust me forth. Ah, luckless fate! 



1 Sister Boe, the old school-mistress of Agen, who acted the 
part of a generous relative, and gave the poet the rudiments of 
reading and writing. 



102 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

'T was thus: a tempting prize was offered by and by 

Upon the term's last week, and my theme won the same. 

(A cassock 'twas, and verily 

As autumn heather old and dry.) 

Pathless, when mother dear upon Shrove Monday came, 

My cheeks fired when we kissed ; along my veins the blood 

Eacing in little blobs did seem. 

More darns were in the cassock, well I understood, 

Than errors in my theme ; 

But glad at heart was I, and the gladder for her glee. 

What love was in her touch ! What looks she gave her 

son! 
" Thank God, thou learnest well! " said she; 
" For this is why, my little one, 

Each Tuesday comes a loaf, and so rude the winter blows, 
It is welcome, as He knows." 

Thereon I gave my word I would very learned be, 
And when she turned away, content was in her eyes. 
So I pondered on my frock, and my sire, who presently 
Should come and take my measure. It happened other- 
wise. 
The marplot de'il himself had sworn 
It should not be, so it would'seem, 
'Nov holy gown by me be worn. 

Wherefore my steps he guided to a quiet court and dim, 

Drove me across, and bade me stop 

Under a ladder, slight and tall, 

Where a pretty peasant maiden, roosted against the wall, 

Was dressing pouting pigeons, there atop. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 103 

Oft as I saw a woman, in the times whereof I write, 

Slid a tremor through my veins, and across my dreary day 

There flashed a sudden vision on my sight 

Of a life all velvet, so to say; 

Thus, when I saw Catrine (rosy she was and sweet), 

I was fain to mount a bit, till I discerned 

A pair of comely legs, a pair of snowy feet, 

And all my silly heart within me burned. 

One tell-tale sigh I gave, and my damsel veered, alas! — 

Then huddled up with piteous cries ; 

The ladder snapped before my eyes. 

She fell ! — escape for me none was ! 

And there we twain lay sprawling upon the court-yard 

floor, 
I under and she o'er! 

The outcries of the maid soon brought all the 
holy household to the spot. " Fillo aymo a fa 
sabe lous pecats que fay fa," remarks Jasmin, 
in a quaint parenthesis, which, by the way, 
illustrates very well the conciseness of expres- 
sion of which his dialect is capable. It means, 
" A girl always likes to have the sins known 
which she has caused others to commit." The 
result of her railing accusation is a terrific rep- 
rimand for poor Jacques, and a sentence of 
imprisonment for the remainder of the carnival. 
In default of a dungeon they locked him into a 
dismal little chamber, w^here he remained until 



104 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVijRES. 

the next clay, very angry and very hungry, until 
chance enabled him to fill up the measure of 
his iniquities by breaking into a high cupboard, 
to which he climbed with the help of table and 
chair, and feasting upon sundry pots of the 
delicious convent preserves, which he found 
hidden there. 

The result must be told in his own words : — 



But while so dulcet vengeance is wrought me by my stars, 
What step is this upon the stair? Who fumbles at the 

bars? 
Alackaday! Who opes the door? 
The dread superior himself! And he my pardon bore! 

Thou knowest the Florence Lion, — the famous picture, 

where 
The mother sees, in stark despair, 
The onslaught of the monster wild 
Who will devour her darling child ; 
And, fury in her look, nor heeding life the least, 
With piercing cry, " My boy! " leaps on the savage beast; 
Who, wondering and withstood, 
Seemeth to quench the burning of his cruel thirst for 

blood, 
And the baby is released. 

Just so the reverend canon, with madness in his eye, 
Sprang on my wretched self, and ' ' My sweetmeats ! ' ' was 

his cry; 



JACQUES JASMIN. 105 

And the nobler lion's part, alas, was not for me ! 

For the jar was empty half, and the bottom plain to see! 

"Out of this house, thou imp of hell, 

Thou 'rt past forgiveness now! Dream not of such a 

thing!" 
And the old canon summoning 
His forces, shook my ladder well. 
Then with a quaking heart, I turned me to descend, 
Still by one handle holding tight 
The fatal jar, which dropped outright 
And shattered, and so came the end! 

Behold me now, in dire disgrace, 

An outcast in the street, in the merry carnival, 

As black as any Moor, with all 

The sweetmeat-stains upon my face ! 

My woes, meseemed, were just begun. 

" Ho for the masque! " a gamin cried; 

Full desperately did I run, 

But a mob of howling urchins thronged me on every side, 

Raised at my heels a cloud of dust, 

And roared, " The masque is full of must! " 

As on the wind's own pinions borne 

I fled, and gained our cot forlorn, 

And in among my household burst, 

Starved, dripping, dead with rage and thirst. 

Uprose a cry of wonderment from sisters, mother, sire. 
And while we kissed I told them all, whereon a silence 

fell. 
Seeing bean-porridge on the fire, 



106 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

I said I would my hunger quell. 

Wherefore then did they make as though they heard not 

me, 
Standing death still? At last arose my mother dear, 
Most anxiously, most tenderly. 
" Why are we tarrying? " said she, 
" No more will come. Our all is here." 

But I, " No more of what? Ah, tell me, for God's 

sake!" — 
Sorely the mystery made me quake, — 
" What wast thou waiting, mother mild? " 
I trembled, for I guessed. And she, " The loaf, my child ! " 
So I had ta'en their bread away! O squalor and distress! 
Accursed sweetmeats ! Naughty feet ! 
I am base indeed ! O silence full of bitterness ! 
Gentles, who pitying weep for every woe ye meet, 
My anguish ye may guess ! 

No money and no loaf! A sorry tale, I ween. 
Gone was my hunger now, but in my aching heart, 
I seemed to feel a cruel smart, 
A stab, as of a brand, fire-new 1 and keen, 
Rending the scabbard it is shut within. 

Silent I stood awhile, and my mother blankly scanned, 
While she, as in a dream, gazed on her own left hand; 
Then put her Sunday kerchief by, 
And rose and spake right cheerily, 

1 " Sabre flamben neou." The expression is interesting as 
indicating the origin of the degenerate phrase, bran* fire new. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 107 

And left us for a while ; and when she came once more, 
Beneath her arm a little loaf she bore. 

Then all anew a-talking fell, 

And to the table turned. Ah, well! 

They laughed, but I was full of thought, 

And evermore my wandering eyes the mother sought. 

Sony was I and mute, for a doubt that me possessed, 

And drowned the noisy clamor of the rest. 

But what I longed to see perpetually withdrew 

And shyly hid from view, 

Until, at last, soup being done, 

My gentle mother made a move 

As she w r ould cut the loaf, signing the cross above. 

Then stole I one swift look the dear left hand upon, 

And ah, it was too true ! — the wedding-ring was gone ! 

Once more the poet breaks off his narrative 
abruptly, but when he resumes it for the third 
and last chapter of his u Souvenirs" his tone ex- 
presses relief, nay, even a kind of modest 
triumph. One year later behold him appren- 
ticed to a hair-dresser, an artisto-en-piels, with 
whom he works faithfully all day, but requests 
us to observe how the leaves of the tall elm out- 
side the barber's back attic window shine at 
midnight. Thanks to his convent schooling he 
could read ; the remnant of daylight after work 
was done became all insufficient ; his savings 



108 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

went to the oil-merchant, and the best pleasure 
of his life was born. 

For ever, as I read, came throngs of phantoms fair, 

With wonder-web of dreams o'er grievous thoughts to 
fling, 

Till passed away in silence those memories of despair, 
The wallet, and the almshouse, and the ring. 

Those three painful images were not quite 
exorcised, and all his life long returned at 
gloomy intervals to haunt him, but he had freed 
himself from their malign spell. Soon came 
first love, still further to beautify existence. 
" It was for her sake," says Jasmin, " that I 
first tried to make verses in the sweet patois 
which she talked so well, verses wherein I asked 
her in lofty and mysterious phrases to be my 
guardian angel." A little farther on he thus 
describes what is always an era in the life of a 
poet : — 

One beauteous eve in summer, when the world was all 

abroad, 
Swept onward by the human stream that toward the 

palace bore, 
Unthinkingly the way I trod, 
And followed eager hundreds o'er 
The threshold of an open door. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 109 

Good Heaven! where was I? What might mean 

The lifting of that linen screen? 

O lovely, lovely vision ! O country strange and fair ! 

How they sing in yon bright world ! and how sweetly talk 

they too ! 
Can ears attend the music rare, 
Or eyes embrace the dazzling view? 
" Why, yon is Cinderella! " I shouted in my maze. 
" Silence! " quoth he who sat by me. 
1 ' Why, then ? Where are we, sir? What is this whereon 

we gaze? " 
< ' Thou idiot ! This is the Comedy ! ' ' 

Ah, yes ! I knew that magic name, 

Full oft at school had heard the same ; 

And fast the fevered pulses flew 

In my low room the dark night through. 

" O fatherland of poesy! O paradise of love! 

Thou art a dream to me no more ! Thy mighty spell I prove. 

And thee, sweet Cinderella, my guardian I make, 

And to-morrow I turn player for thy sake! " 

But slumber came at dawn, and next the flaming look 

Of my master, who awoke me. How like a leaf I shook ! 

" Where wast thou yesternight? Answer me, ne'er-do-weel ! 

And wherefore home at midnight steal? " 

" Oh, sir, how glorious was the play! " 

" The play, indeed! 'T is very true what people say: 

Thou art stark crazy, wretched boy, 

To make so vile an uproar through all the livelong night ! 

To sing and spout, and rest of sober souls destroy. 

Thou who hast worn a cassock, nor blushest for thy plight ! 



110 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Thou 'It come to grief, I warn thee so ! 

Quit shop, mayhap, and turn thyself a player low! " 

" Ay, master dear, that would I be! " 

" What, what? Hear I aright? " said he. 

" Art blind? and dost not know the gate 

That leadeth to the almshouse straight? " 

At this terrific word, the heart in me went down 

As though a club had fallen thereon ; 

And Cinderella fled her throne in my light head. 

The pang I straightway did forget; 

And yet, meseems, yon awful threat 

Made softer evermore my attic bed. 

By the time lie was eighteen, Jasmin had sown 
his modest crop of wild oats, and opened a bar- 
ber's shop of his own, and the maiden who had 
inspired his first verses had promised to marry 
him. " Two angels took up their abode with 
me then,'' he says. His wife was one, and the 
other was his rustic muse, the angel of homely, 
pastoral poetry, — 

THio, fluttering softly from on high, 

Raised on her wing and bore me far 

Where fields of balmiest ether are. 

There, in the shepherd lassie's speech 

I sang a song, or shaped a rhyme ; 

There learned I stranger lore than I can teach. 

O mystic lessons ! Happy time ! 

And fond farewells I said, when at the close of day 

Silent she led my spirit back whence it was borne away. 



JACQUES JASMIN. Ill 

A few words are given to his wedding ; and 
then he adds, — 

The rest, methinks, full well is known; 

How doubly blest my life hath been 

In plenty and in peace, how fifteen times have flown 

The seasons four since then. 

Curl-papers now, and songs anon, 

Into my little shop had drawn 

Erelong a rill of silver fine ; 

So that in frenzy all divine 

I rose at last, and brake that barber's chair of mine ! 

No wonder that, after such an experience, he 
retorts with spirit and scorn, when he reads in a 
journal the malicious remark that " Pegasus is a 
beast who carries poets to the almshouse." On 
the contrary, he says, Pegasus conveyed him to 
a notary's place, and it is owing to that friendly 
steed alone that he, figures first of his family on 
the tax-gatherer's list ; albeit he admits that the 
last-named honor has its disadvantages. He also 
confesses frankly that his house is yet unfin- 
ished, but assures us that his wife, who at first 
rather deprecated his verse-making, now sees a 
joist in every stanza and a tile in every rhyme, 
and hands him his pens quite officiously. And 
the homely reminiscences which have fluctuated 



112 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

so fast between laughter and tears, close with a 
droll story of the wrath and amazement in his 
father's household when they learned that he 
had been described, in the public print, as a 
"son of Apollo:"— 

My sire leaped as if shot, and roared, " How's this, Catrine? 

Is my son not my son? Make answer what they mean! " 

" Thine is he, then," she said, and her cheeks with wrath 
were red ; 

" My poor old Jean, be comforted! 

I never loved a man but thee." — 

" And who then may this rascal 'Polio be? " 

" Nay, that I know not! Girls, have ye heard of yonder 
rake?" 

"Xot we ! " My sisters tossed their caps while scornfully 
they spake. 

" 'T is some old wretch, belike, should be cited to at- 
tend 

The court. Where lives he, brother ? " I, willing to defend 

My good old master, 'Polio, from the fury of their spleen, 

Ere they could march him sadly off, two grim hussars be- 
tween, 

Before the justice to appear, 

Was fain to make the poet's meaning clear. 

Long time they doubted ; but when I 

Had told them many a tale from the old mythology, 

Reluctantly they let the case go by. 

Thus, reader, have I told my tale in cantos three. 
Small risk my muse hath run; a thrifty singer, she. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 113 

For though Pegasus should rear and fling me, it is clear, 
However ruffled all my fancies fair, 
And though my time I lose, my verses I may use ; 
For paper still will serve for curling hair ! 

I have been thus copious in illustrating Jas- 
min's "Souvenirs," because the poem gives the 
actual outlines of his extraordinary life, and re- 
flects without reserve the humor, the sensibility, 
and the extreme simple-heartedness of the man. 
In order to understand the real scope of his 
genius, its depth and strength, his fertility in 
romantic and picturesque incident, his shrewd- 
ness in reading character and his dramatic skill 
in representing it, in what divine innocence 
of established canons the greater part of his 
work is done, and in what implicit obedience 
to the few which he knows the remainder, 
we must study his graver and what might be 
called his more ambitious pieces, if he did not 
always impress one as too spontaneous for am- 
bition. Of one of these, " The Blind Girl of 
Castel-Cuille," we are fortunate in possessing 
Mr. Longfellow's complete and very close and 
beautiful version. There are at least two other 
poems of Jasmin's, " Frangonette " and " Marthe 

8 



114 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

La Folle," which fully deserve to rank with 
" The Blind Girl " in dignity of theme and 
treatment, and some illustrations of one of these 
will be given in the next chapter. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 

II. 

T MUST beg leave to remark in passing that I 
have constantly recurring doubts about the 
fitness for English verse, especially in earnest 
and impassioned narrative, of the Alexandrine 
or iambic hexameter, which forms the basis of 
all Jasmin's longer poems. It is, however, diffi- 
cult to find a substitute for it. The iambic pen- 
tameter, our natural narrative metre, is one foot 
shorter, and the Gascon of Jasmin is not easily 
condensed. Moreover, the pentameter does not 
lend itself readily to rhythmic variations and 
caprices, and so I am fain, though diffidently, still 
to follow the movement of the original. 

In a preface, dated July 4, 1840, Jasmin dedi- 
cated the poem of " Franconette " to the city of 
Toulouse, thereb}^ expressing his gratitude for 
a banquet given him in 1836 by the leading 
citizens of that place, at which the president of 
the day had given the toast, " Jasmin, the 



116 TROUBADOURS AND TRO UTERES. 

adopted son of Toulouse." The action of the 
poem begins during the persecutions of the 
French Protestants in the sixteenth century. 
Blaise de Montluc, Marshal of France, after 
putting men, women, and children of the Hugue- 
nots indiscriminately to the sword, had shut 
himself up in the Chateau d'Estillac, and was 
understood to be devoting himself to religious 
exercises ; " taking the sacrament while dripping 
with fraternal blood,*' says the poet. 

Xow the shepherds in those days, and every shepherd lass. 
At the bare name of Huguenot, would shiver with affright 
Amid their loves and laughter. So then it came to pass 
In a hamlet nestling underneath a castled height, 
On the day of Roquefort f£te, while Sunday bells out- 
rang, 
The jocund youth danced all together, 
And, to a fife, the praises sang 
Of Saint James and the August weather, — 
That bounteous month which year by year, 
Through dew-fall of the even clear 
And fire of tropic noons, doth bring 
Both grapes and figs to ripening. 

'T was the very finest fete that eyes had ever seen 
In the shadow of the vast and leafy parasol 
Where aye the country-folk convene. 
Overflowing were the spaces all; 



JACQUES JASMIN. 117 

Down cliff, up dale, from every home 

In Montagnac or Saint Colombe, 

Still they come, 

Too many far to number ; 

More and more, more and more, while flames the sun- 
shine o'er. 

But there 's room for all, their coming* will not cumber ; 

For the fields will be their inn, and the little hillocks 
green 

The couches of their slumber. 

Among them came Frangonette, the belle of 
the country-side, concerning whom we are be- 
sought to allow the poet just two words. 

Never you fancy, gentles, howe'er it seem to you, 

This was a soft and pensive creature, — 

Lily-fair in every feature, 

With tender eyes and languishing, half-shut and heaven 

blue ; 
With light and slender shape in languor ever swaying, 
Like a weeping willow with a limpid fountain playing, — 
Not so, my masters; Franqonette 
Had vivid, flashing orbs, like the stars in heaven set; 
And the laughing cheeks were round, whereon a lover 

might 
Gather in handfuls roses bright ; 
Brown locks and curly decked her head ; 
Her lips were as the cherry red ; 
Whiter than snow her teeth ; her feet 
How softly moulded, small and fleet! 



118 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

How light her limbs! Ah, well-a-day! 

What if the whole at once I say? 

Hers was the very head ideal 

Grafted on woman of this earth, most fair and real! 

Such a miracle, the poet says, may be wrought 
in any rank or race, to the envy of maidens and 
the despair of men. All the swains in a wide 
region about Roquefort admired Fran^onette, 
and the girl knew it ; and it made her beauty 
shine the brighter. Yet she felt her triumph 
to be incomplete, until Pascal, the handsomest 
of them all, and incomparably the best singer, 
who hitherto had held somewhat aloof, should 
fairly acknowledge her sway. Her good old 
grandmother, with whom she lived (for her 
mother was dead, and her father had disappeared 
in her own infancy, and his fate was unknown); 
detected her coquettish manoeuvres and reproved 
them. 

" Child, child," she nsed to frown, 

" A meadow 's not a parlor, and the country 's not the 

town ! 
And thou knowest that we promised thee lang-syne 
To the soldier-lad, Marcel, who is lover true of thine. 
So curb thy nights, thou giddy one; 
For the maid who covets all, in the end, mayhap, hath 

none." 



JACQUES JASMIN. 119 

" Nay, nay," replied the tricksy fay, 

With swift caress and laughter gay 

Darting upon the dame, " there 's another saw well known. 

Time enough, granny dear, to love some later day! 

Meanwhile, she who hath only one hath none." 

Now such a course, you may divine, 
Made hosts of melancholy swains, 
Who sighed and suffered jealous pains, 
Yet never sang reproachful strains 
Like learned lovers when they pine ; 
Who, ere they go away to die, their woes write carefully 
On willow or on poplar tree. 
Good lack! these could not shape a letter, 
And the silly souls, though lovesick, to death did not in- 
cline, 
Deeming to live and suffer on were better ! 
Bat tools were handled clumsily, 
And vine-sprays blew abroad at will, 
And trees were pruned exceeding ill, 
And many a furrow drawn awry. 

Methinks you know her now, this fair and foolish girl ; 
Watch while she treads one measure, then! See, see her 

dip and twirl ! 
Young Etienne holds her hand by chance ; 
'T is the first rigadoon they dance. 
With parted lips, right thirstily 
Each rustic tracks them where they fly; 
And the damsel sly 
Feels every eye, 
And lighter moves for each adoring glance. 



120 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Holy cross, what a sight! when the madcap rears aright 

Her shining lizard's head, and her Spanish foot falls light, 

And when the wasp-like figure sways 

And swims and whirls and springs again, 

And the wind with a corner of the blue kerchief plays, 

One and all smack their lips, and the cheeks whereon 
they gaze 

Would fain salute with kisses twain. 

And some one shall; for here the ancient custom is, 

Who tires his partner out may leave her with a kiss; 

Xow girls turn weary when they will, always and every- 
where; 

Wherefore already Jean and Paul, 

Louis, Guillaume, Pierre, 

Have breathless yielded up their place 

"Without the coveted embrace. 

It is now the turn of Marcel, the big, bluster- 
ing soldier, comely enough in feature, "straight 
as an I," boastful and vain, who makes a claim 
to the hand of Fran§onette, which the village 
belle has never allowed. He has tried all man- 
ner of clumsy stratagems to entrap her into a 
formal acceptance. He has ostentatiously pa- 
raded every smile which he has won from any 
other damsel in the vain hope of exciting her 
jealousy ; and now, having witnessed the discom- 
fiture of so many of his rivals, strides forward and 
takes her hand with an air of intense confidence 



JACQUES JASMIN. 121 

and satisfaction. The dance begins anew, and 
is watched with breathless interest. On they 
go for an incredible while, and Fran<jonette ap- 
parently grows fresher with every figure, but 
the Herculean soldier is tired out, at last, turns 
giddy, and reels : — 

Then darted forth Pascal into the soldier's place. 

Two steps they take, one change they make, and Fran- 

§onette, 
Weary at last, with laughing grace 
Her foot stayed and upraised her face ; 
Tarried Pascal that kiss to set? 
Not he, be snre! and all the crowd 
His victory hailed with plaudits loud. 
The clapping of their palms like battledores resounded, 
While Pascal stood among them as confounded. 
How then Marcel, who truly loved the wayward fair? 
Him the kiss maddened. Springing, measuring w T ith 

his eye, 
" Pascal," he thundered forth, "beware! 
Not so fast, churl! " and therewith brutally let fly, 
With aim unerring, one fierce blow 
Straight in the other's eyes, doubling the insult so. 

A shadow as of a thunder-cloud fell on the 
merry fete. " A man need not be a monsieur" 
says Jasmin, " to resent an insult ; " and the fiery 
Pascal returned the blow with interest. Directly, 



122 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

with a zest which would appear to be peculiarly 
Gascon, the two engaged on the spot in a terrific 
duel. The3 r fought for a long time without de- 
cided advantage on either side, the sympathies 
of the on-lookers being mostly with Pascal, until 
suddenly there appeared among them a u gentle- 
man all gleaming with gold," no other than the 
lord of the manor, the Baron of Roquefort 
himself, who sternly separated the combatants. 
The young shepherds cheered the wounded 
Pascal to his dwelling, while Marcel turned 
silently away vowing vengeance on them all, 
and swearing that Franconette should marry no 
man but him. 

The next canto opens in mid-winter, when 
notice is carried round by Jean the tambourinist, 
among the country-folk, now secluded upon 
their comparatively silent farms, of a grand busk- 
ing? followed by a dance, to take place on Fri- 
day, the last night of the year. 

1 The buscou, or busking, was a kind of bee at which the 
young people assembled, bringing the thread of their late 
spinning, which was divided into skeins of the proper size by 
a broad, thin plate of steel or whalebone called a busc. The 
same thing under precisely the same name figured in the toil- 
ets of our grandmothers, and hence, probably, the Scotch use 
of the verb " to busk or attire." 



JACQUES JASMIN. 123 

But when the Friday carne, a frozen dew was raining, 

And by a tireless forge a mother sat complaining; 

And to her son, who stood thereby, 

Spoke out at last entreatingly : 

" Hast forgot the summer day, my boy, when thou didst 

come, m 

All bleeding from, the fray, to the sound of music home ? 
Ah ! go not forth, Pascal ! I have dreamed of flowers again, 
And what means that but tears and pain? " 
i; Xow art thou craven, mother! and seest life all black. 
But wherefore tremble, since Marcel is gone and comes not 

back?" 
" Oh yet, my son, take heed, I pray, 
For the Wizard of the Black Wood is roaming round this 

way, — 
The same who wrought such harm a year agone. 
And, they tell me, there was seen coming from his care at 
dawn, 
But two days past, a soldier. Xow, 
What if that were Marcel ? Oh, child, take care, take care! 

The mothers all give charms unto their sons : do thou 
Take mine; but, I beseech, go not forth anywhere! " 
" Just for one hour mine eyes to set 

On friend Thomas! Xo more, my mother. " 
" Thy friend, indeed ! Xay, nay! Thou meanest on Fran- 
conette. 
Dreamest I cannot see thou lovest no other? 
Go to ! I read it in thine eyes. 
Though thou singest and art gay, thy secret bravely keep- 
ing, 
That I may not be sad, yet all alone thou 'rt weeping. 
My heart aches for thy miseries ; 



124 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Yet leave her for thy good, Pascal ! 

She would so scorn a smith like thee, 

With sire grown old in penury: 

For poor we are; thou knowest all, — 

How we have sold and sold till barely a scythe remains * 

Oh, dark the days this house hath seen, 

Pascal, since thou hast ailing been ! 

Now thou art well, arouse thee! do something for our 

gains; 
Or rest thee, if thou wilt; we can suffer, we can fight: 
But, for God's love, go thou not forth to-night! " 

After a short struggle with himself, Pascal 
yielded, and turned away to his forge in silent 
dejection, and soon the anvil was ringing, and 
the sparks were flying, while away down in the 
village the busking went merrily on. " If the 
prettiest were always the most capable," says 
the sensible poet, " how much my Frangonette 
would have accomplished ; " but, instead, she 
flitted from place to place, idle and gay, jesting, 
singing, and, as usual, bewitching all. At last 
Thomas, the friend of whom Pascal had spoken 
to his mother, asked leave to sing a song ; and, 
fixing his keen eyes upon the coquette, he began 
in tones of lute-like sweetness : — 



JACQUES JASMIN. 125 



THE SIEEX WITH THE HEART OF ICE. 

Thou whom, the swains environ, 

O maid of wayward will, 
O icy-hearted siren, 
The hour we all desire when 

Thou too, thou too shalt feel ! 
Thy gay wings thou dost nutter, 
Thy airy nothings utter, 
"While the crowd can only mutter, 
In ecstasy complete, 
At thy feet. 
Yet hark to one who proves thee 

Thy victories are vain, 
Until a heart that loves thee 

Thou hast learned to love again ! 

Sunshine, the heavens adorning, 

We welcome with delight ; 
But thy sweet face returning, 
With every Sunday morning, 

Is yet a rarer sight. 
We love thy haughty graces, 
Thy swallow-like swift paces, 
Thy song the soul upraises, 

Thy lips, thine eyes, thy hair, — 
All are fair. 
Yet hark to one who proves thee, etc. 

Thy going from them widows 
All places utterly. 



126 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

The hedgerows and the meadows 
Turn scentless ; gloomy shadows 

Discolor the blue sky. 
Then, when thou comest again, 
Farewell fatigue and pain ! 
Life glows in every vein. 

O'er every slender finger 

We would linger. 
I"et hark to one who proves thee, etc. 

Thy pet dove, in his flitting, 

Doth warn thee, lady fair! 
Thee, in the wood forgetting; 
Brighter for his dim setting 

He shines, for love is there * 
Love is the life of all, 
Oh answer thou his call, 
Lest the flower of thy days fall, 
And the grace whereof we wot 
Be forgot ! 
For, till great love shall move thee, 

Thy victories are vain. 
'T is little men should love thee; 

Learn thou to love again. 

There arose a clamor of approbation and cries 
for the name of the composer, which Thomas 
gave without hesitation — Pascal. Frangonette 
was unwontedly touched, and yet more when, 
in reply to some inquiry about his absence that 
night, she heard Thomas explaining that his 



JACQUES JASMIN. 127 

friend had been six months ill from the se- 
vere wound which he received in defence of 
Frangonette ; and that the family, dependent 
on his labor, had sunk into extreme poverty. 
But she concealed her emotion sedulously, and 
was in the midst of a game of sarro coutelou, 
cache couteau, or hunt the slipper, and the life 
of it, when a sudden misfortune interrupted 
their sport. Amid her struggles to free herself 
from Laurent, — who had caught her and was 
claiming the customary forfeit, — Franc onette 
caused him to slip on the floor, and it presently 
appeared that his arm was broken. Precisely 
at this unlucky moment, a sombre apparition 
dawned on the assembty : — 

A grim old man above them peered, 
With girdle swept by flowing beard; 
'T was the Black Forest Wizard ! All knew him, and all 

feared. 
" Wretches," he said, " I am come from my gloomy rocks 

up yonder 
To open your eyes, being filled with ruth for you, and 

wonder ! 
You all adore this Franconette, 

Learn who she is, infatuate! — 
Her sire, a poor man and an evil, 

While yet the babe in cradle sate, 
Went over to the Huguenots, and sold her to the Devil ! 



128 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Her mother is dead of grief and shame, 
And thus the demon plays his game : — 

Full closely doth he guard his slave, 
Unseen, he tracks her high and low. 
See Laurent and Pascal ! Did both not come to woe, 

Just for one light embrace she gave ? 
Be warned in time ! For whoso dares this maid to wed, 
Amid the brief delight of his first nuptial night, 
Suddenly hears a dreadful thunder-peal o'erhead! 
The Demon cometh in his might 
To snatch the bride away in flight, 
And leave the ill-starred bridegroom — dead." 

The wizard spake no more, but angry fiery rays, 

From the scars his visage bore, seemed suddenly to blaze. 

Four times he turned his heel upon, 
Then bade the door stand wide or ever his foot he stayed. 
With one long groan the door obeyed, 

And lo, the bearded man was gone! 

But left what horror in his wake ! Xone stirred in all that 

throng. 
Only the stricken maid herself stood brave against her 

wrong; 
And in the hope forlorn that all might pass for jest, 
With tremulous smile, half bright, half pleading, 

She swept them with her eyes, and two steps forward 

pressed : 
But when she saw them all receding, 
And heard them say, " Avaunt ! " her fate 
She knew. Then did her eves dilate 



JACQUES JASMIN. 129 

With speechless terror more and more ; 
The while her heart beat fast and loud, 
Till with a cry her head she bowed, 

And sank in swoon npon the floor. 

It is very characteristic of Jasmin that he 
pauses at this crisis of the story, earnestly 
to explain and excuse the dense superstition 
of his country-folk at that period, whereby 
it came to pass that the once radiant and tri- 
umphant Frangonette was shunned thencefor- 
ward as an accursed thing. These frequent 
confidences of the poet with his reader are so 
perfectly unstudied that they add wonderfully 
to the vraisemblance of his tale. The third canto 
opens with a lovely picture of a cottage by a 
leafy brook-side in Estanquet, one of the ham- 
lets adjacent to Roquefort (and where tradition 
still identifies the home of Frangonette). There, 
when the next spring opened, the "jealous 
birds " listened in vain for a girlish voice, the 
music of which in years gone by had been 
sweeter than their own. At last the nightin- 
gales, more curious than the rest, made their 
way into the maid's garden, — and what did 
thejr see ? Her straw hat lay on a bench ; there 

9 



130 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

was no ribbon about the crown. Her rake and 
watering-pot were dropped among her neglected 
jonquils ; the branches of her rose-trees ran riot. 
Peering yet farther, even inside the cottage- 
door, these curious birds discovered an old 
woman asleep in an arm-chair, and a pale, quiet 
girl beside her, who, from time to time, let fall 
a tear upon her little hands. " It is Frango- 
nette," says the poet. " You will have guessed 
that already." 

On the terrible New- Year's Eve just described, 
when Franconette had lied for shelter to the 
arms of her good old grandmother, the latter 
had soothed her as best she might, by solemn 
assurances that the sorcerer's cruel charge was 
false. But how could it be proved so, save by 
Frangonette's father, whose whereabouts no one 
knew, even if he were alive, so long ago had he 
vanished from the place? For the remainder*of 
the winter the two women lived almost alone, 
neglected by all their neighbors, and scarce vent- 
uring abroad. Only with the return of spring, 
one sweet gleam of hope had come to Fran<jo- 
nette with the rumor that Pascal defended her 
everywhere, and boldly declared her to be the 



JACQUES JASMIN. 131 

victim of a brutal plot. She was dreaming of 
his goodness even now, and it was this which 
had softened her proud spirit to tears. But her 
trance was dispelled by a sudden, sharp cry from 
the aged sleeper : — 

Then sprang she to her side and found her open-eyed, 
And caught the awesome word, "Is the wall not all a- 

flame? " 
And then, -" Ah, 'twas a dream! Thank God!" the 

murmur came. 
" Dear heart," the girl said softly, " what was this dream 

of thine? " 
u O love, 'twas night; and loud, ferocious men, me- 

thought, 
Were lighting fires all round our cot, 
And thou didst cry unto them, daughter mine, 
To save me ; but didst vainly strive, 
And here we two must burn alive ! 
Oh torment that I bare! How shall I cure my fright? 
Come hither, darling, let me hold thee tight! " 

Then the white-headed dame, in withered arms of love, 

Long time with yearning tenderness 

Folded the brown-haired girl, who strove 

By many a smile and mute caress 

To hearten her, until at length 

The aged one cried out, for that love gave her strength, 

" Sold to the demon? Thou! It is a hideous lie ! 

Wherefore weep not so patiently 



132 TROUBADOURS AND TROU VERES. 

And childlike, but take heart once more, 

For thou art lovelier than before. 

Take granny's word for that! Arise, 

Go forth ! Who hides from envious eyes 

The thirst of envy slakes. I have heard so o'er and o'er! 

Also I know full well there is one who loves thee yet; 

Only a word lie waiteth to claim thee for his own. 

Thou likest not Marcel? But he could guard thee, pet, 

And I am all too feeble grown. 

Or stay, my darling, stay! To-morrow 's Easter day ; 

Go thou to Mass, and pray as ne'er before! 

Then take the blessed bread, if so the good God may 

The precious favor of his former smile restore; 

And, on thy sweet face, clear as day, 

Prove thou art numbered with his children evermore." 

Then such a light of hope lit the faded face again, 

Furrowed so deep with years and pain, 

That, falling on her neck, the maiden promised well; 

And once more on the white cot silence fell. 



When, therefore, on the morrow, came all the country- 
side 
To list the hallelujahs in the Church of Saint-Pierre, 
Great was their wonderment who spied 
The maiden Franconette silently kneeling there, 
Telling her beads with downcast eyes of prayer. 
She hath need, poor little thing, Heaven's mercy to im- 
plore ! 
Xever a woman's will she win, 
For these, beholding her sweet mien, 
And Marcel and Pascal who eyed her fondly o'er, 



JACQUES JASMIN. 133 

Smote her with glances black as night ; 

Then, shrinking back, left her alone, 

Midway of a great circle, as they might 

Some guilty and condemned one, 

Branded upon his brow in sight. 

Nor was this all. A man well known, 

Warden and uncle to Marcel, 

Carried the blessed Easter bread, 

And like a councillor did swell 

In long-tailed coat, with pompous tread. 

But when the trembling maid, signing the cross, essayed 

To take a double portion, as the dear old grandame bade, 

Bight in the view of every eye 

The sacred basket he withdrew, and passed her wholly by. 

And so, denied her portion of the bread whereby we live, 

She, on glad Easter, doth receive 

Dismissal from God's house for aye! 

Death-sick with fear, she deemeth all is lost indeed. 

But no, — she hath a friend at need. 

Pascal hath seen her all the while ; 

Pascal's young foot is on the aisle; 

He is making the quest, and, nothing loath, 

In view of uncle and of nephew, both, 

Quietly doth to her present 

Upon a silver plate, with fair flowers blossoming, 

The crown-piece ' of the holy element, — 

And all the world beholds the thing. 

1 A custom formerly prevailed in some parts of France, and 
was brought thence by emigrants to Canada, where it flourished 
not long ago, of crowning the sacramental bread by one or 
more frosted, or otherwise ornamented, cakes, which were re- 
served for the family of the Seigneur, or other communicants 
of distinction. 



134 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

O moment full of sweetness! Her blood sprang into 
fleetness, 

Warmth was in all her frame, and her senses thrilled 

once more, 
As the body of God, arisen 
Out of its deathly prison, 
Could life unto her own restore. 
But wherefore did her brow suddenly rosy grow? 
Because the angel of love, I trow, 
Did with his glowing breath impart 

Life to the flame long smouldering in her wayward heart, — 
Because a something strange, and passing all desire, 
As honey sweet, and quick as fire, 
Did her sad soul illuminate 
With a new being; and, though late, 
She knew the name of her delight, — 
The fair enigma she could guess. 
People and priest vanished from sight, 
And she saw in all the church only one man aright, — 
He whom she loved at last with utmost gratefulness. 

Leave we the throng dispersing, and eagerly conversing 

Of all I here have been rehearsing, 

But lose not sight of her at all, 

Who hath borne the bread of honor to the ancient dame 

ere this, 
And sitteth now alone, shut in her chamber small, 
Face to face with her new-found bliss. 

First fall of happy dew the parched lands to quicken, 
First mild sun-ray in winter, ye are less welcome far 
Unto the earth with sorrow stricken 
Than these mysterious transports are 



JACQUES JASMIN. 135 



To the dazed maiden dreaming there, 
Forgetful of her heavy care, 
And softly in her spirit moving 
To the name-new delight of loving. 



From evil tongues withdrawn, did she — 

As do we all — sink open-eyed in reverie, 

And built, with neither hammer nor stone, 

A small fair castle of her own, 

Where shone all things in Pascal's light, and cheer and 

rest 
Flowed like a living brook. Ah, yes, the sage was right! 
The sorrowing heart aye loveth best. 
But when the heart controls us quite, 
Quick turns to gall the honey of our delight. 
Suddenly she remembers all! Her heaven turns gray; 
A dread thought smites her heavily, — 
To dream of love? Why, what is she? 
Sweet love is not for her ! The mighty sorcerer 
Hath said she is sold for a price, — a foredoomed murderer 
With a heart of devilish wrath, which whoso dares to 

brave, 
And lie one night in her arms, therein shall find his grave. 
She to see Pascal perish at her side? 
" my good God, have pity on me! " she cried. 



So, rent with cruel agonies 

And weeping very sore, 
Fell the poor child upon her knees 

Her little shrine before. 



136 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES." 

" holy Virgin," sighing, " on thee alone relying 

I come. I am all astray! Father and mother too 

Are dead lang syne, and I accursed! All tongues are 

crying 
The hideous tale! yet saye, if haply it be true ; 
Or if they have falsely sworn, be it on my soul borne 
When I shall bring- my taper to thy church 1 on fete-day 

morn. 
Then, blessed mother, let me see 
That I am not denied of thee! " 

Brief prayer and broken, 

If truly spoken, 

Doth lightly up to heaven fly. 

Sure t<» have wod a gracious ear 

The maid her purpose holds, and ponders momently, 

And oftentimes turns sick, ami cannot speak for fear, 

But sometimes taketh heart, and sudden hope and strong 

Shines in her soul, as a meteor gleams the night along. 

So ends the third canto, and the fourth and 
last begins with the dawn of the fete day on 
which are fixed Franconette's desperate hopes 
and fears. The inhabitants of half-a-dozen vil- 
lages, — Puymirol, Artigues, Astaffort, Lusig- 
nan, Cardonnet, Saint-Cirge, and Roquefort, 

1 Notre Dame de bon Encontre, a church in the suburbs of 
Agen celebrated for its legend, its miracles, and the numerous 
pilgrimages which are annually made to it in the month of 
May. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 137 

with priests and crucifixes, garlands and candles, 
banners and angels, 1 are mustering at the church 
of Notre Dame in Agen, and somehow, not only 
is the tale rife among them of the maiden who 
has been sold to the demon, but the rumor cir- 
culates that to-day she will publicly entreat the 
blessed Virgin to save her. The strangers are 
kinder to her than her more immediate neigh- 
bors, and from many a pitying heart the prayer 
goes up that a miracle may be wrought in the 
beautiful girl's behalf. She feels their sympathy 
and gathers confidence. And now the special 
suppliants are passing up to the altar one by 
one, — anxious mothers, disappointed lovers, 
the orphaned, and the childless. They kneel, 
they ask for their blessing, they present their 
candles for the old surpliced priest to bless, and 
they retire : — 

Xor did a sign of sorrow on any suppliant fall, 

Bnt with lightened hearts of hope their ways went one 

and all. 
So Franconette grew happy too, 
And most of all, because Pascal prayed smiling in her 

view ; 

1 The angels walked in procession and sang the Angelus at 
the appropriate hours. 



138 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Yea, dared to raise her eyes to the holy father's own; 
For it seemed to her that love and lights and hymns and 

incense, too, 
Were crying " grace,' ' in sweet unison. 
And she sighed, " Oh, grace divine, and love! — let these 

be mine ! ' ' 
Then straightway lit her taper and followed to the shrine, 
Bearing flowers in her other hand; and every one 
Kindly gave place, and bade her forward move, 
Then fixed their eyes upon the priest and her, 
And scarce a breath was drawn, and not a soul did stir, 
While the priest laid the image of redeeming love 
Upon the orphan's lips. But, ere her kiss was given, 
Brake a terrific peal, as it would rend the heaven, 
Darkening her taper and three altar-lights above! 
Oh, what is this? The crashing thunder, 
The prayer denied, the lights put out. 
"Good God! she is sold indeed! All, all is true, no 

doubt!" 
So a long murmur rose, of horror and of wonder; 
And while the maiden breathlessly, 

Cowering like a lost soul their shuddering glances under, 
Crept forth, all shrank away and let her pass them by. 

Howbeit, that great peal was but the opening blow 

Of a wild storm and terrible 

That straightway upon Roquefort fell. 

The spire of Saint-Pierre l was laid in ruin low. 

And, smitten by the sharp scourge of the hail, 

In all the region round men could but weep and wail. 

1 The ancient parish church of Roquefort, whose ruins 
only now remain. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 139 

The angel-bands who walked that day 
In fair procession, hymns to sing, 
Turned sorrowing, all save one, away, 
Or a pro nobis murmuring. 

But in those early times, not yet, as now, 

Her perilous waves to clear, 

To other jealous towns could stately Agen show 

Great bridges three, as she a royal city were, — 

Two simple barges only, by poles propelled slow, 

Waited the sacred minstrels to bear them to Roquefort, 

To whom came rumors of the wide-spread woe, 

Ere landing they were ranged for singing on the shore. 

And first the tale but half they heed; 

But soon they see, in very deed, 

Vineyards and happy fields with hopeless ruin smit. 

Then each let fall his banner fair, 

And lamentations infinite 

Bent on all sides the evening air, 

Till, o'er the swelling throng rose deadly clear the cry, 

u And still we spare this Franconette! " Then suddenly, 

As match to powder laid, the word 

Set all on fire, and there were heard 

Howls of "Ay, ay, the wretch! now let her meet her 

fate! 
She is the cause of all, 't is plain! 
Once hath she made us desolate, 
But verily shall not so again." 
And ever the press grew, and wilder, angrier, too, 
And ' ' Hunt her off the face of the earth ! ' ' shrieked one 

anew. 



140 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

" At, hunt her to death ! 'T is meet ! " a thousand tongues 

repeat ; 
And the tempest in the skies cannot with this compete. 
Oh, tli en, to have seen them as they came 
With clenched fists and eyes aflame, 

You had said, " Hell doth indeed its demons all unchain." 
And while the storm recedes, and the night is growing 

clear, 
Hot poison shoots through eTery vein 
Of the possessed madmen here. 

Thus goaded they themselves to crime; but where was 

she, 
Unhappy Franconette? To her own cottage driven, 
She worshipped her one relic, sadly, dreamily, 
And whispered to the withered flowers Pascal had given, 
11 Dear nosegay, when I saw thee first, 
Methought thy sweetness was divine, 
And I did drink it, heart-athirst ; 
But now thou art not sweet as erst, 
Because these wicked thoughts of mine 
Have blasted all thy beauty rare. 
I am sold to the powers of ill, and Heaven hath spurned 

my prayer ! 
My love is deadly love! Xo hope on earth have I! 
So, treasure of my heart, flowers of the meadow fair, 
Because I love the hand that gathered you, good-by! 
Pascal must not love such as I ! 
He must the accursed maid forswear, 
AYho yet to God for him doth cry. 
In wanton merriment last year 



JACQUES JASMIN. 141 

Even at love laughed Franconette : 
& ft 7 

Now is my condemnation clear. 

Now whom I love, I must forget. 

Sold to the demon at my birth, — 

My God, how can it be? Have I not faith in thee? 

blessed blossoms of the earth, 

Let me drive with my cross the evil one from me ! 

And thou, my mother, in the starry skies above, 

And thou, my guardian, Mother of God, 

Pity ! I love Pascal ! Must part from him I love ! 

Pity the maid accursed, by the rod 

Sore smitten, to the earth down-trod; 

Help me the heart divine to move! " 

" Franconette, little one, what means thy plaintive moan? " 

So spake the hoary dame. " Didst thou not smiling say 

Our Lady did receive thy offering to-day? 

But sure, no happy heart e'er made so sad a moan! 

Thou hast deceived me! Some new ill," she said, 

" Hath fallen upon us! " " Nay, not so. Be comforted; 

1 — I — am happy. " "So, my deary, 
God grant some respite we may have, 
For sorrow of thine doth dig my grave, 

And this hath been a lonesome, fearsome day, and weary; 
That cruel dream of the fire I had a while ago, 
However I strove, did haunt me so! 

And then, thou knowest the storm; anew 1 was terrified, 
So that to-night, meseems, I shudder at nought " — 

What sudden roar is this outside? 

" Fire! Fire! Let us burn them in their cot! " 

Shine all the cracks in the old shutter gaping wide ; 



142 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

And Franconette springs to the doorway tremblingly, 

And, gracious Heaven! what doth she see? 

By the light of the burning rick, 

An angry people huddled thick ; 

She hears them shout: " Xow, to your fate! 

Spare neither the young one, nor the old; 

Both work us ruin manifold. 

Off with thee, child of wrath! or we will roast thee, 

straight! " 
Then cried the girl on her knees to the cruel populace, 
" You will slay my granny with your very words! " and 

prayed for grace. 
But when, in their infuriate blindness, heed they take 
Of the poor pleader in her unbound hair, 
They only think they see her, then and there, 
Torn by the rage demoniac, 
And all the fiercer cry, " A vaunt! " 
While the more savage forward spring, 
And their feet on the threshold plant, 
Fragments of blazing cord in their arms brandishing. 

"Hold! I command you, hold!" cried one, before un- 
heard ; 

And a man leaped into the crowd like lightning with the 
word, — 

One whom we know, — and over all 

His voice uplifted thus Pascal: 

11 What! will ye murder women, then? 

Children of God, and you, the same ; 

Or are ye tigers, and not men? 

And after all they have suffered! Shame! 



JACQUES J ASM IX. 143 

Fall back, fall back, I say ! The walls are growing hot ! " 

' ; Then let them quit for aye our shore! 

They are Huguenots — knowest thou not? — long since by 

the demon bought; 
God smites because we drave them not before." 
" Quick, bring the other forth, or living she will burn! 
Ye dogs, who moved you to this crime? 
It was the wroth Marcel! See where he comes in time! " 
" Thou liest! " the soldier thundered in his turn; 
u I love her, boaster, more than thou! " 
1 'How wilt thou prove thy love, thou of the tender 

heart?" 
"I am come to save her life! I am come to take her 

part ! 
I am come, if so she will, to marry her, even now! " 

" And so am I." replied Pascal; and steadfastly. 

Before his rival's eyes, bound as by some great spell, 

Unto the orphan girl turned he 

With worship all unspeakable. 

" Answer us, Franconette. and speak the truth alone! 

Thou art followed from place to place, by spite and scorn, 

my own; 
But we two love thee well, and ready are to brave 
Death, ay, or helh thy life to save. 
Choose which of us thou wilt! " lc Xay," she lamented 

sore, 
" Dearest, mine is a love that slays. 
Be happy then without me! Forget me; go thy ways! " 
14 Happy without thee, dear? That can I never more! 
Nay, were it true, as lying rumor says, 



144 TROUBADOURS AND TROU VERES. 

An evil spirit ruled thee o'er, 

I would rather die with thee than live bereaved days! " 

When life is at its bitterest 

The voice of love aye rules us best. 

Instantly rose the girl above her mortal dread, 

And, on the crowd advancing straight, 

" Because I love Pascal, alone I would meet my fate. 

Howbeit, his will is law," she said, 

" Wherefore together let our souls be sped." 

Then was Pascal in heaven, Marcel in the dust laid low, 

Whom amid all the quaking throng his rival sought, 

Crying, l \ I am more blessed than thou. Forgive! Thou 

art brave, I know; 
Some squire should follow me to death, and wilt thou 

not? 
Serve me! I have no other friend." Marcel seemed 

dreaming, 
And now lie scowled with wrath, and now his eye grew 

kind; 
Terrible was the battle in his mind 
Till his eye fell on Franconette, serene and beaming, 
But with no word for him. Then pale but smilingly, 
" Because it is her will," he said, " I follow thee." 

Two weeks had passed away, and a strange nuptial train 
Adown the verdant hill wound slowly to the plain. 
First came the comely pair we know in all their bloom, 
While, gathered from far and wide, three deep on either 

side, 
The ever curious rustics hied, 
Shuddering at heart o'er Pascal's doom. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 145 

Marcel conducts their march, but pleasure's kindly hue 

Glows not on the unmoving face he lifts to view, 

And something glances from his eye 

Which makes men shudder as they pass him by. 

Yet verily his mien triumphant is ; at least 

Sole master is he of this feast, 

And gives his rival, for bouquet, 

A supper and a ball to-day. 

But, at the dance and at the board 

Alike, scarce one essayed a word; 

None sang a song, none raised a jest, 

For dark forebodings that oppressed. 

And the betrothed, by love's deep rapture fascinated, 

Silent on the sheer edge of fate the end awaited. 

No sound their dream dispelled, but hand in hand did 

press, 
And eyes looked ever on a visioned happiness. 
And so, at last, the evening fell. 

Then one affrighted woman suddenly brake the spell. 
She came. She fell on Pascal's neck. " Fly, son! " she 

cried ; 
' ' I am come from the sorceress even now ! Fly thy false 

bride ! 
For the fatal sieve ! hath turned ; thy death decree is 

spoken ! 

1 Lou sedas. The sedas is a sieve of raw silk used for sift- 
ing flour. It has also a singular use in necromancy. When 
one desires to know the name of the author of an act, — a 
theft, for instance, — the sieve is made to revolve, but woe to 
him whose name is spoken just as the sieve stops. 

10 



146 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

There 's a sulphur fume in the bridal room, by the same 

dread token. 
Enter it not! If thou livest, thou art lost," she said, 
11 And what were life to me if thou wert dead? " 

Then Pascal felt his eyelids wet, 
And turned away, striving to hide his face; whereon, 

" Ingrate! " the mother shrieked, " but I will save thee 
yet; 
Thou wilt not dare " — and fell at the feet of her son — 
'• Thou shalt pass over my body, sure as thou goest forth! 
A wif '. it Beems, is all, and a mother nothing worth; 

Unhappy that I am! " All wept aloud for woe. 

"Marcel !" the bridegroom said, "her grief is my de- 
spair; 
But love, thou knowest, is stronger yet. 'T is time to go ! 
Only, if I should die, my mother be thy care." 

u I can no more! Thy mother hath conquered here," 
The sturdy soldier said, and he too brushed a tear. 

11 Prythee take courage, friend of mine! 
Thy Frangonette is good and pure; 

Yon tale was told of dark design. 
But give thy mother thanks : but for her coming, sure 

This night had seen my death and thine." 
" What sayest thou? " " Hush ! I wilt tell thee all. 
Thou knowest I loved this maid, Pascal; 
For her, like thee, I would have shed my blood. 
And I dreamed I was loved again, — she held me so in 

thrall, — 
Albeit my prayer was aye withstood. 



JACQUES JASMIN, 147 

She knew her elders promised her to me, 
And so, when other suitors barred my way, in spite, 

Saying, ' In love as in war one may use strategy,' 
I gave the wizard gold, my rivals to affright. 

Thereafter chance did all; insomuch that I said, 
My treasure is already won ; 

But when, in the same breath, we two our suit made 
known, 

And when I saw her, without turn of head 
Toward my despair, choose thee, it was not to be borne! 
I vowed her death, and thine, and mine, ere morrow morn ! 

I had thought to lead you forth to the bridal bower ere- 
long, 
And there, the bed beside, which I had mined with care, 
To say, i Xo prince of the power of the air 

Is here ! I burn you for my wrong. 
Ay, cross yourselves,' quoth I, ' for you shall surely die! ' 
And the folk had seen us three together fly ! 

" But thy mother, with her tears, hath put my vengeance 

out. 
I thought of my own, Pascal, who died so long ago. 
Care thou for thine ! Thou hast nought to fear from me, 

I trow ; 
Eden is coming down to earth for thee, no doubt, 
But I, whom men henceforth can only hate and flout, 
Will to the wars away! for something in me saith, 
I may recover from my rout 

Better than by a crime, — ay, by a soldier's death! " 
Saying, he vanished; and loud cheers broke forth on every 

side, 



148 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

The while, with deepening blushes, the Wain each other 

eyed, 
As they were suddenly timid grown. 

For now the morning stars in the dark heaven shone — 
1 lift my pencil here, my breath comes hurriedly; 
Colors for strife and pain have I, 
Bui for their perfect rapture — none. 1 

And bo the morning came with softly dawning light; 

and, no stir, as yet, inside the cottage white, 
Albeit, at Estanquet, three hamlets gathered were 
To wait the waking of the wedded pair. 

Marcel had told the whole unhappy truth. Nathless, 
The devil was mighty in those days; 

Some fear for the bridegroom yet, and guess 
At strange mischance. "In the night wild cries were 

heard," one says; 
One hath seen shadows dance on the wall in wondrous 
ways. 
Lives Pascal yet? None dares to dress 
The spiev broth ' 2 to leave beside the nuptial door; 
And so another hour goes o'er. 

Then floats a lovely strain of music overhead, 

1 The reader will he reminded of William Morris, at the close 
of his exquisite story of Psyche : — 

" My lyre is hut attuned to tears and pain ; 
How can I sing the never-ending day ? " 

2 Lou tourrin, a highly-spiced onion soup, which is carried by 
the wedding guests to the bridegroom at a late hour of the 
night. 



JACQUES JASMIN. 149 

A sweet refrain oft heard before, 

'T is the aubado 1 offered to the newly wed. 

So the door opes at last, and the young pair are seen; 
And she, though flushing for the folk, with friendly hand 

and mien, 
The fragments of her garter gives, 
And every woman two receives. 

Then winks and words of ruth from eye and lip are passed, 
And the luck of our Pascal makes envious all at last ; 
For the poor lads whose hearts, I ween, are healed but 
slightly 

Of their first passionate pain, 
When they see Franconette, blossoming rose-like, brightly, 
All dewy fresh, all sweet and sightly, 

Cry, " We will ne'er believe in sorcerers again! " 

The action of the poem is so rapid that, in 
order to give a complete outline of the plot, 
and some notion of the fine discrimination of 
character which it contains, I have been obliged 
to omit some descriptive passages of extreme 
beauty. M. de Lavergne says truly of " Franco- 
nette," that it is, of all Jasmin's works, the 
one in which he has aimed at being most en- 
tirely popular, and that it is, at the same time, 
the most noble and the most chastened. He 
might have added, the most chivalrous also. 

1 A song of early morning, corresponding to the serenade or 
evening song. 



150 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

There is something essentially knightly in Pas- 
cal's cast of character, and it is singular that, at 
the supreme crisis of his fate, he assumes, as if 
unconsciously, the very phraseology of chivalry: 
" Some squire (donzel) should follow me to 
(hath," etc.; and we find it altogether natural 
and becoming in the high-hearted smith. There 
are many places where Jasmin addresses his 
readers directly as " Messieurs ; " where the con- 
text also makes it evident that the word is 
emphatic ; that he is distinctly conscious of 
addressing those who are above him in rank, 
and that the proper translation is " gentles," 
or even " masters : " yet no poet ever lived who 
was less of a sycophant. The rather rude wood- 
cut likeness prefixed to the popular edition of 
the Gascon's works represents a face so widely 
unlike all well-known modern types, that one 
feels sure it must be like the original. Once 
seen in living reality, it must have haunted the 
memory for ever. It is broad and massive in 
feature, shrewd and yet sweet in expression, 
homely, and serenely unconscious. It is " vilain 
et tres vilain" in every line, but the head is car- 
ried high, with something more than a courtier's 
dignity. 



THE SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 

I. 

|"T is not easy to say how much of the interest 
of the new Provengal literature is due to the 
ancient dignity of its name, and to a kind of re- 
flected lustre which it receives from the far- 
away glories of the old. Yet when we come to 
look carefully for the connection and resem- 
blance between the two, we shall be surprised 
to find how slight these are. Nearly all the 
modern literatures of Europe owe as much to 
the early Provencal poetry, as does the literature 
of the Troubadours' own land. Nay, it has 
seemed, until very lately, as if France had been 
the smallest heir to the rich legacy of modern 
song, if not completely disinherited. The truth 
is, that the literature of the troubadours, childish 
in spirit, but precociously mature and beautiful 
in form, perished early by violence and without 
issue. Aliens had already caught the spirit of 
it, and imitated its music with more or less sue- 



152 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

cess ; but six hundred years were to elapse be- 
fore a school of poetry would arise in which we 
might reasonably look for a true family likeness 
to this the first untutored outburst of modern 
minstrelsy. The likeness may be traced, no 
doubt, but it is faint and fleeting. The early 
Provencal literature stands before us as some- 
thing unique, integral, immortally youthful, and 
therefore unconscious of its own range and limi- 
tations, pathetic from the brevity of its course, 
a development of art without an exact parallel 
in the world's history. 

There lias never been a more brilliant analysis 
of what may be called the technique of the trou- 
badour poetry than Sismondi's in his u Literature 
of the South of Europe." He does no less than 
furnish a key to the whole mystery of modern 
versification, and whoever would study that 
versification as an art ought to bestow the most 
careful attention on Sismondi's first four chap- 
ters. But even Sismondi has his prepossessions ; 
and in particular we are inclined to think that 
he lays too much stress on the influence of the 
Arabs, at least over the forms of modern verse. 
There is no doubt that the frequent incursions 



SOXGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 153 

of the Saracens into the south of France, dur- 
ing the three centuries preceding a.d. 1000, 
influenced powerfully the imagination of the 
inhabitants of Provence, and furnished them 
with subjects for an abundant ballad literature 
of a crude order, slight but sufficient traces of 
which remain. But the mutual aversion of 
Christian and infidel was then at its height ; 
the Mocarabins, or mixed Arabians, — Chris- 
tian Goths, who under special circumstances 
accepted the amnesty of their Mussulman con- 
querors and lived peaceably under their sway, 
and on wdiose influence in diffusing Orien- 
tal culture Sismondi lays great stress, — w r ere 
shunned as the vilest of apostates ; and although 
these were the days of Haroun Al Raschid and 
his son, Al Mamoun, under whom every branch 
of Moorish art flourished amazingly, there seems 
no good reason to suppose that the Christians 
borrowed more from the Saracens in the depart- 
ment of poetry than they did in that of con- 
structive architecture or general decoration. 
There are words of Arabian origin in the Ro- 
mance language, and there are many more of 
Greek origin, preserved from that long period 



15 J: TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

of Greek occupation and civilization which ante- 
dated even the Roman conquest. But the lan- 
guage as a whole remains Latin, modified by 
the speech of the northern barbarians, and the 
first of a family of such languages to produce a 
literature. 

And as with the form of this literature, so 
with its substance and inspiration. We have 
twhere traced what seems to us the unbroken 
descent — through the Latin hymnology of the 
earlier Middle Age — of the troubadour meas- 
ures in which, as in all modern verse, the effect 
depends upon accent, from the classic measures 
in which the effect depends upon quantity. It is 
possible, although by no means, certain, that the 
first idea of those terminal rhymes which were 
destined to play so important a part in the new 
poetry may have been derived from Oriental com- 
positions, of which they were a conspicuous orna- 
ment. But at all events, it was in the cell of 
the Christian monk that the seeds of poetic as 
of all other culture were kept and fostered as 
carefully as the flowers of the convent-garden, 
through the troubled season of the first Chris- 
tian millennium. During that most dreary time 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 155 

of transition, Christianity was slowly spreading 
among the half-savage races which had replaced 
the Romans and their colonists in the south of 
Europe, and adopting and assimilating to itself 
certain of the native barbarian ideas. Promi- 
nent among these was that serious, almost su- 
perstitious respect for woman which seems a 
birthright of the northern nations. It was a 
notion wholly at variance with the view of 
classic paganism, but one which the spirit of 
Christianity favored. The grand primitive pas- 
sion — the love of man for woman — received a 
sort of theoretic consecration, and the virgin 
mother of Jesus Christ became one of the chief 
objects of public worship. And then in the 
period of reaction and exhilaration which fol- 
lowed the close of the tenth century, and the 
relief from that harrowing presentiment of the 
end of the world and the last judgment which 
had prevailed almost everywhere as the first 
millennial year approached, at the time also of 
the final repulse of the Saracens in the south- 
west, — then, if ever, chivalry, or the adventurous 
service of God and womankind, took systematic 
shape, and the Crusades were its first outgrowth 



156 TROUBADOURS AND TROUYERES. 

in action, and the love-poetry of the trouba- 
dours, or minstrels of the south, its first symmet- 
rical expression in art. 

Many volumes have been written on the posi- 
tion and profession of the troubadour ; charming 
volumes, too, which are accessible to almost 
every reader. Yet when all is gathered which 
can be certainly known, how strange a phenom- 
enon lie remains to our modern eyes! How 
much is still left to tie 1 imagination ! We know 
that he was usually attached to the household 
of a great seignior or the court of a reigning 
sovereign, and was a frequent, though, as it 
would seem, voluntary attendant on their dis- 
tant expeditions. We know that it was his 
metier, or at any rate a principal part of it, to 
select some lady as the object, for the time being, 
of his formal worship, and to celebrate her 
charms and virtues in those melodious numbers, 
the secret of whose infinitely variable beauty he 
himself never ceased to regard as a kind of 
miraculous discovery or revelation. We know 
that while the singer was sometimes even of 
kingly rank, oftener a poor cavalier who had 
need to live upon his skill in finding, and oftener 



SOXGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 157 

yet a man of humble birth whom genius was 
readily allowed to ennoble, the lady-love was 
almost always of exalted station ; frequently, by 
the operation of the Salic law, a great heiress 
in her own right ; and that hence her hand was 
certain to have been disposed of for prudential 
or political reasons before she had any choice in 
the matter. There were reasons, therefore, 
besides total depravity, why she was regularly 
a married woman. 1 We know that, theoret- 



1 " The prolonged barbarity of the feudal marriage relation 
gave rise to the most singular moral and social phenomena. 
Of those first germs of civilization which we have seen ferment- 
ing and developing themselves in the eleventh century, that new 
sentiment, that respectful enthusiasm which even then tended 
to become the principle of disinterested actions, was the most 
deep-rooted and the most energetic. This new sentiment how- 
ever could not manifest itself truly and become a moral force, 
a principle of heroism, in conjugal relations. ... It was 
rather in contradistinction with those relations, and as if with 
a view to compensate for their defects, that the love of chivalry 
developed itself; and if any thing can aid us in forming a 
correct conception of the exaggerated pretensions, the refine- 
ments, and the subtleties of this love, it is the precarious and 
interested motives of the feudal marriage-tie. The sufferings 
to which women were exposed as wives explain to a certain ex- 
tent the adoration which they exacted and obtained as the ladies 
of the chevaliers/' Fauriel's " History of Provencal Poetry," 
p. 321 of Adler's English translation. I cite the translation 
because I have not the original at hand, but it is in most 
respects a very bad one. 



158 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

ically, cliivalric love was a something mystical 
and supersensual ; but that the courts of love 
sanctioned much which the courts of law, even 
of those days, forbade. We know that a seign- 
ior and a husband could regard with compla- 
cency, not to say pride, the ceremonial devotion 
of his vassal to his wife ; yel that he was liable 
to be visited, when all things appeared most 
picturesque and prosperous, by movements of 
what we cannot help regarding as a natural 
jealousy, and impulses to deadly revenge. We 
know thai in the great majority of cases there 
came a "sombre close" to the troubadour's 
14 voluptuous day," and thai his life of amatory 
adventure and artificially stimulated emotion 
was apt to end in the shadow of the cloister. 
We seem, in fine, to see him as an airy, graceful 
insouciant figure, who sports and sings along a 
dainty path, skirting the sheer and lofty verge 
of the great gulf of human passion ; and the 
student will probably decide, from his own 
knowledge of human nature, in what proportion 
of cases he kept his perilous footing upon the 
flowery heights, and in what he plunged head- 
long into the raging deeps below. 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 159 

So much for the man ; and now a word or two 
more about his work. Let it be understood 
that we are to speak of the chansons, or love- 
songs, chiefly. There is another great body of 
troubadour literature, coming under the gen- 
eral head of sirventes and comprising narrative 
and satirical poems, which, though full and 
overfull of suggestions about the manners of 
the time, have, as a rule, no great literary merit. 
The chief wonder of the chansons is, and must 
ever be, the contrast between the consummate 
beauty and immense variety of their forms, and 
the simplicity, the sameness, and the frequent 
triviality of their sentiments. In this respect 
troubadour poetry is like Greek sculpture. The 
technical excellence of it is so incredible that 
we cannot help regarding it as something spon- 
taneous, half-unconscious, — found, as the trou- 
badours themselves so strikingly said* rather 
than learned, — which no care and patience of 
deliberate effort could ever quite have attained. 
Sismondi complains of the monotony of the 
troubadour compositions ; that they begin by 
amazing and end by disappointing the student. 
But they can disappoint, it seems to us, only 



160 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

him who is predetermined to seek for more than 
is in them. It is little to say that they show 
no depth of thought. They contain hardly any 
thought at all. The love of external nature is 
represented in them alone by the poet's peren- 
nial rapture at the return of spring; spring, 
which terminated his winter confinement and set 
him free to wander over the sunny land ; spring, 
with its mysterious but everlastingly intimate 
association with thoughts of love. Of sensuous 
imagery of any kind these poems contain very 
little, which is another reason for distrusting 
the theory of Arabian origin and influence. 
They are "all compact" of primary emotion, of 
sentiment pure and simple ; and, as such, they 
rank in the scale of expression between music 
and ordinary poetry, partaking almost as much 
of the nature of the former as of the latter; 
which again is one reason why, although the 
rules of their language are simple, these lyrics 
are often so very obscure, — so elusive, rather, 
and intangible in their meaning. Their words 
are like musical notes, not so much signs of 
thought as symbols of feeling, which almost 
defy an arbitrary interpretation, and must be 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 161 

rendered in part by the temperament of the per- 
former. 

And herein will be found our excuse, or rather 
our reason, for having, in the versions which we 
have attempted, preserved at all hazards the 
measure and movement of the originals, the 
lines of widely varying length, the long-sus- 
tained and strangely distributed rhymes. The 
reader who cares to examine these originals — to 
which he is referred — will find the rendering 
not always close, according to the present high 
standard of accuracy ; but where form is so 
wonderfully paramount to sense, a likeness in 
form seems of the first importance, and the 
rest has to come somewhat as Heaven pleases. 
Strictly speaking, however, some of these ver- 
sions, at least, should rather be called para- 
phrases. 

The selections which follow have been made, 
with one or two exceptions, from Raynouard's 
" Choix des Poesies originates des Troubadours," 
first published in 1816, or three years later than 
Sismondi's analysis of the structure of the trou- 
badour verse. In a note to one of his later 
editions, Sismondi expresses himself as disap- 

11 



162 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

pointed in many ways in the collection of Ray- 
nouard ; chiefly because, like other bodies of 
elegant extracts, it shows little of the coarser 
side of the Provencal poetry, and thus fails to 
illustrate its range. Out of the two or three 
hundred poets whom Ravnouard specifies, we, 
however, shall have mentioned in this series of 
articles hardy a score, and may certainly be 
pardoned Tor having selected those of their 
strains which we found most delicate and sweet, 
and which seemed to us to exhibit, with 
the least defacement from the license of the 
time, the Bublimated ideal of that lisping, short- 
lived school of song. 1 We have also preferred 
those authors whose names are most associated 
with contemporary history, and if we dared 
hope that our imperfect- versions might evoke 

1 And it need hardly be said, that, so far as we have treated 
this poetry at all, we have treated it seriously. Like all modes 
of exclusively sentimental expres-ion, it is easily open to ridi- 
cule ; but the entire literature can hardly have partaken in its 
day of the nature of a joke. Those, however, who desire to 
see it travestied with considerable ability, and the stories of its 
chief masters flippantly and amusingly told from a thoroughly 
modern and rather vulgar point of view, are recommended to 
a little book entitled, " The Troubadours : their Loves and 
Lyrics," by John Rutherford, published in London by Smith 
and Elder, 1873. 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 163 

around the reader any thing resembling the 
Cor6t-like atmosphere haunted by simple bird- 
notes, with which we felt ourselves invested 
during the dark winter-days while we were 
transcribing them, we should be more than 
content. 

It is matter for rejoicing, that the first of the 
troubadours whose works are well authenticated 
was a sovereign who figured somewhat conspic- 
uously in the history of his time, so that his most 
important piece can be exactly dated, and the 
rest approximately. The ease and finish of 
William of Poitiers's versification, and the fact 
that his was a life of constant war and crowded 
adventure, in which poetry can have been only 
a pastime, forbid us to suppose that he was 
really the father of Provencal song. But al- 
though, as the editor of Sainte Palaj'e dryly ob- 
serves in the notice of William in his " Histoire 
litt^raire des Troubadours," it is the quality 
of the poetry that concerns us, not that of the 
poet, — it is doubtless to the quality of the poet 
that we owe the preservation of the poetry. 

William IX., Count of Poitiers and Duke of 
Aquitaine, was born in 1071, and succeeded in 



164 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

his fifteenth year to the sovereignty of a region 
comprising, besides Gascony and the northern 
half of Aquitaine, Limousin, Berry, and Au- 

^ne. He grew up hold in war, unscrupulous 
in wit, and unbridled in love, a man of many 
crimes, bul famed for the courtesy of his man- 
ners, and capable of generous and even pious 
the French call them. He is. in fact, 
one of tin* first distinctly knight-like figures we 
have, — a character of which the strong tints 
and picturesque outlines yet stand out clearly 
from the faded canvas of history. Of the many 
anecdotes preserved concerning him we give, on 
the authority of William of Malmesbury, one 
which piquantly illustrates his usual attitude 
toward the clergy and the church. In William's 
forty-third year, the Bishop of Poitiers excom- 
municated him on account of one of the many 

ndals with which his name was associated. 
When the bishop began his formula, William 
fiercely drew his sword and threatened to kill 
him if he went on. The prelate made a feint 
of pausing, and then hurriedly pronounced the 
rest of the sentence. " And now you may 
strike," said he, " for I have done." " No," re- 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 165 

plied William, coolly putting up his sword, " I 
don't like you well enough to send you to 
Paradise ! " Many of William's amatory poems 
are unfit for translation, and there is too much 
reason to suppose that they describe adventures 
of his own ; but some are wholly noble and 
refined, and seem to show that the fine ideal of 
chivalric love was already formed, even in so 
stormy a breast as William's. We give a speci- 
men of one of these last. It is in the favorite 
spring key : — 

Behold, the meads are green again, 1 
The orchard-bloom is seen again, 
Of sky and stream the mien again 

Is mild, is bright ; 
Now should each heart that loves obtain 

Its own delight. 

But I will say no ill of love, 
However slight my guerdon prove : 
Repining doth not me behoove ; 

And yet — to know 
How lightly she, I fain would move, 

Might bliss bestow ! 

1 " Pus vezem de nouelh Jlorir," etc. (Raynouard, vol. v., 
p. 117.) 



166 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

There are who hold my folly great, 
Because with little hope I wait ; 
But one old saw doth animate 

And me assure : 
Their hearts are high, their might is great, 

Who well endure. 

Almost alone of the great nobles of Southern 
Europe, William resisted the call of Ra} r mon(l 
of Toulouse to the first Crusade in 1095; but 
when, in 1099, the great news arrived of the 
Capture of Jerusalem, and an appeal was made 
for the reenforcement of the small garrison left 
in the Holy Land, William was overcome and 
prepared to go; and the second of his pie< 
which we have attempted to render was com- 
posed early in the year 1101, on the eve of his 
departure : — 

Desire of song hath taken me, 1 
Yet sorrowful must my song be. 
No more pay I my fealty 
In Limousin or Poitiers. 

Since I go forth to exile far, 
And leave my son to stormy war, 
To fear and peril, for they are 

Xo friends who dwell about him there. 

1 "Pus de chantar rn y es pres talens," etc. (Raynouard, vol. 
iv. 3 p. 83.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 167 

What wonder, then, my heart is sore 
That Poitiers I see no more, 
And Fulk of Anjou must implore 
To guard his kinsman and my heir? 

If he of Anjou shield him not, 
And he who made me knight, 1 I wot 
Many against the boy will plot, 
Deeming him well-nigh in despair. 

Xay, if he be not wondrous wise, 
And gay and ready for enterprise, 
Gaseous and Angevins will rise 
And him into the dust will bear. 

Ah, I was brave, and I had fame, 
But we are sundered all the same. 
I go to him in whose great name 
Confide all sinners everywhere. 

Surrendering all that did elate 
My heart, all pride of steed or state, 
To him on whom the pilgrims wait, 
Without more tarrying, I repair. 

Forgive me comrade, most my own, 
If aught of wrong I thee have done ! 
I lift to Jesus, on his throne, 

In Latin and Romance, my prayer. 

1 Philip I. of Prance, "William's suzerain. 



168 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Oh, I was gallant, I was glad, 
Till my Lord spake, and me forbade : 
But now th'* end is coming sad, 
Nor can I more my burden bear. 

Good friends, when that indeed I die, 
Pay me due honor \\ here I lie; 
Tell how in Love and luxury 

I triumphed still, or here or there. 
Bui farewell now, love, Luxury, 

And Bilkeu robes, and minnevair! 1 

The suggestions of this naive lament are almost 

infinite. In the first place, it is impossible to 
doubt that it came straight from the heart of 
the writer, and expresses, without the faintest 
disguise, his conflicting emotions. As the out- 
burst of $ reckless, vehement, voluptuous nature, 
under a sort of moral arrest or conviction, it is 
touchingly frank. A second summons to the 
Holy Land had come, one which it would be 
palpable dishonor to disregard. If the going 
thither might serve by way of expiation of for- 
mer sins of sense and violence, the ducal poet 
felt bound to go, since he had more upon his 

1 The movement of these two specimens is almost the same, 
but William was master of a variety of measures, and some- 
times managed trochaic verse with great skill, as in the song 
beginning " Farai cansoneta nova." 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 169 

conscience in that way than he could comfort- 
ably sustain. But he makes not the faintest 
pretence to enthusiasm, religious or other. It 
is grievous to him to leave his own realms, the 
scene of all his pleasures and triumphs. He 
really loved his child, and would have enjo^l 
superintending his education in knightly e^r^^ 
cises ; and to abandon him to the attacks and 
encroachments of jealous neighbors was intoler- 
able. It is evident also that he put no very 
implicit faith in the disinterestedness either of 
his seignior or of Fulk of Anjou. Never did 
his home-life look more alluring ; and the notion 
of turning his back upon it at the Lord's behest 
was altogether melancholy. He feels that he can- 
not long survive such a sacrifice, yet that he has 
hardly a choice about making it. The allusion, 
in the eighth stanza, apparently to his comrade 
in arms, is positively tender ; and the impulse 
which leads him to request, in the closing lines, 
that he may be honored after his death for those 
things in which he did really delight and excel, is 
almost droll in its honesty. We have lingered the 
longer over these personal revelations because 
they are, after all, the soul of literary history, 



170 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

and we shall find only too little of the sort in 
most of the remaining songs which we shall cite. 
It remains to add, that William's presentiment 
of martyrdom was not realized. He escaped 
the manifold disasters of the campaign of 1101, 
and returned within two years to his native 
land. With characteristic levity, lie afterwards 
applied himself, in the brief intervals of his 
struggles with Alphonse Jourdain for the pos- 
sion of Toulouse, t<> the composition of a long 
narrative poem, in which he seems to have de- 
tailed, in a rather humorous fashion, the events 
of that tragic Syrian campaign; but the poem, 
though frequently mentioned, has not heen pre- 
served. He died in 1127, at the age of fifty- 
six. 

Very little is known concerning the life and 
character of Marcabrun, the author of our next 
specimen. The question has even been raised, 
whether the Crusade mentioned in this little 
sirvente were the Crusade of 1147, or that of 
St. Louis, preached in 1209. The former is 
more probable. The Louis named in the fourth 
stanza was, presumably, Louis VII., the fiist 
husband of Queen Eleanor of England, who 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 171 

accompanied him on this Crusade ; and Mar cab' 
run must therefore have been contemporary, for 
a few years at least, with William of Poitiers. 
In the twenty or more pieces ascribed to him, 
there are but few allusions to love, and Mar- 
cabrun alone, of ail the troubadours, is not 
known ever to have been himself a subject of 
the tender passion. The contrast is curious 
between the highly artificial structure of the 
following verses, — one rhyme five times re- 
peated, and the others separated by the length 
of an entire stanza, — and the extreme sim- 
plicity and obviousness of the sentiments: — 

A fount there is, doth overfling 1 

Green turf and garden walks ; in spring, 

A glory of white blossoming 

Shines underneath its guardian tree, 
And new-come birds old music sing ; 
And there, alone and sorrowing, 

I found a maid I could not cheer, 

Of beauty meet to be adored, 
The daughter of the castle's lord; 
Methought the melody outpoured 
By all the birds unceasingly, 

1 "A la fontanel del vergier," etc. (Raynouard, vol. iii., p. 
875.) 



172 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

The season Bweet, the verdant sward, 
Might gladden her, and eke my word 
Her grief dismiss, would she but hear. 

Her tears into the fountain fell; 
With sorry sighs her heart did swell. 
14 ( ) Jesus, king invisible," 

She cried, " of fchee is my distr 
Through thy deep wrong berefl I dwell. 
Earth's best have bidden us farewell, 

I ha thee at thine own shrine to wait. 

li And my true love is also gone, 

The free, fair, gentle, valiant one; 

8 whal can I. but make my moan? 

And how the sad desire suppr< 
Thai Louis 1 name were here unknown: 
The prayers, the mandates all undone, 

Whereby I am made desolal 

Soon as I heard this plaintive cry, 

Moving the limpid wave anigh, 

11 Weep not, fair maid, so piteously, 

Nor waste thy roa -' " thus I cried; 
" Neither despair, for he is by 
"Who wrought this leafy greenery, 

And he will give thee joy one day." 

11 Seigneur, I well believe," she said, 
11 Of God I shall be comforted 
In yonder world, when I am dead, 
And many a sinful soul beside: 
But now hath he prohibited 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 173 

My chief delight. I bow ray head, 
But heaven is very far away ! ' ' 

Even more studied in structure, but also more 
musical than the above, are the few love-poems 
of Peter of Auvergne, who was born near the 
time of William of Poitiers's death, and whose 
career of nearly a century, lasting at least until 
1214, won for him the surname of " the An- 
cient." In the old manuscript " Lives of the 
Troubadours," 1 Peter of Auvergne is described 
as having risen by his genius, from a humble 
station, to be the favored companion of princes. 
" He made," observes the monkish historian, 
" better-sounding verses than had ever been 
made before his time, especially one famous 
verse about the short days and long nights. 
He made no song [chanson']^ for at that time 
no poems were called songs, but verses, and Sir 

1 Of these there are two collections, made "by the monks, and 
still preserved in the original manuscripts. One of these was 
made in the twelfth century, by Carmentiere, a monk of the 
Isles of Thiers, under the direction of Alphonso II., King of 
Aragon and Count of Provence. The other was made, near 
the close of the fourteenth century, by a Genoese, called " The 
Monk of the Isles of Gold," who completed and corrected the 
work of Carmentiere. In 1576, Jean Nostradamus compiled, 
from these and other sources, his rather apocryphal " Lives of 
the Provencal Poets;" and Crescimbeni, in his " Stdria della 
Volgar Poesie," has made a good selection from Nostradamus. 



174 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Giraud de Borneil made the first chanson that 
ever was made. But he was graced and honored 
by all worthy men and women, and was held to 
be the best troubadour in the world, before the 
days of Giraud de Borneil. He praised himself 
and his own Bongs a great deal, and blamed the 
other troubadours:" both of which assertions 
his remains abundantly confirm; "and," adds 
the biographer, who occasionally makes a pa- 
rade of citing an authority, "the Dauphin of 
Auvergne, who was born in his day, has told 
me that he lived long and honorably in the 
world, and finally went into his order, and 
died.'' A few verses out of the longest and 
most elaborate of Peter's love-lyries will suffice 
as a specimen of his manner: — 

" Now unto my lady's dwelling 1 
Hie thee, nightingale, away, 

Tidings of her Lover telling, 
Waiting what herself will say; 

Make thee 'ware 

How she doth fare; 
Then, her shelter spurning, 

Do not be, 

On any plea, 
Let from thy returning. 

1 ■* Rossinhol en son Repaire" etc. (" Parnasse Occitanien," 
page 138.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 175 

" Come, thine utmost speed compelling, 

Show her mien, her state, I pray! 
All for her is my heart swelling ; 
Comrades, kindred, what are they? 
Joyons bear 
Through the air, 
Wheresoever turning, 
Zealously, 
Fearlessly, 
All thy lesson learning! " 

When the bird of grace excelling 

Lighted on her beauty's ray, 
Song from out his throat came welling, 
As though night had turned to day. 

Then and there 

He did forbear, 
Until well discerning 

Hear would she, 

Seriously, 
All his tale of yearning. 

And so on through the three stanzas of the 
poet's formal message to his laoly, as delivered 
by the bird. The text is very obscure in parts, 
and is given with unusual variations by different 
compilers, and the reiterated rhyme grows well- 
nigh impossible to imitate, ever so remotely. In 
the seventh stanza, where the lady's answer be- 
gins, a second set of rhymes is adopted, and this 
is preserved through the latter half of the poem. 



176 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

All that is known of Guirand le Roux, the 
author of our next specimen, is very interesting, 
and intimately associates the poet's name with 
some of the famous persons and events of his 
time. The manuscript " Lives of the Trouba- 
dours" contain only this brief notice of him: 
"Girandos le Rox was of Toulouse, the son of 
a poor cavalier who came to serve at the court 
of his seignior, the Count Alphonse. He was 
courteous, and a line singer, and became enam- 
oured of the countess, the daughter of his seign- 
ior; and the love which he bore het taught him 
how to find [trobar], and he made many \ 
Now the Count Alphonse, here mentioned, was 
Alphonse Jourdain, second son of Raymond de 
it Gilles, the ardent and self-devoted captain 
of the first Crusade. Alphonse himself was born 
in the Holy Land, and baptized by his father in 
the Jordan : whence his surname. Raymond, as 
is well known, took a vow to die where Christ 
had died, and performed it; and his elder son, 
Bertrand, followed his example, resigning the 
county of Toulouse to his brother Alphonse, 
then a lad of thirteen or fourteen, when he left 
for Syria in 1109. For ten years, our old friend 
William of Poitiers disputed, with varying for- 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 177 

tune, the right of Alphonse of Toulouse. After 
this, the latter, having established his claim, 
reigned in peace, until he himself fulfilled the 
family destiny by joining the second Crusade ; 
and the poems of Guirand le Roux all belong to 
the period between 1120 and 1147, the date of 
that Crusade ; probably, also, to the last ten 
years of that period. As for Guirand's lady- 
love, the only daughter of Alphonse mentioned 
in trustworthy history is a natural one, who 
accompanied her father to the Holy Land, and 
there became the wife, or a wife, of Sultan 
Noureddin, and the heroine of some wonder- 
fully romantic adventures. And though Sainte 
Palaye, or his editor, insists that a natural 
daughter never had the title of countess, and 
even persuades himself of a certain Faidide 
married to Humbert III. of Sicily, there is little 
reason for doubting the identity of Guirand's 
mistress with the brilliant heroine of Eastern 
story. At all events, he, almost alone of the 
troubadours, loved one woman only, and sang 
of love exclusively, in strains of unfailing dig- 
nity and refinement. Here is one of which the 
high-flown devotion, whimsical but not un- 

12 



178 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

manly, reminds us a little of the latest and no- 
blest lyrics of chivalry, — the melodies of Love- 
lace, Wotton, and Montrose. Observe, as in 
our last specimen, the rhymes corresponding in 
successive stanzas : — 

Come, lady, to my Bong incline, 1 
The last that shall assail thine ear. 
None other caies my strains to hear, 
And scarce thou feign'st thyself therewith delighted; 
Nor know I well it' I am loved or slighted; 

But this I know, thou radiant one and BWeet, 
That, loved or spurned, I die before thy feet! 

Yea, I will yield this life of mine 
In very <\>-^d. if cause appear, 
Without another boon to cheer. 

Honor it IS to !>»' by tie"* incited 

Toanydeed; and I. when most benighted 

By doubt, remind me that fcim *s change and fleet, 

And brave men still do their occasion meet. 

Thus far we have quoted minor poets only ; 
but our next name is one of the most illustrious 
in Provencal literature. The long and con- 
spicuous life of Bernard of Ventadorn — or 
Ventadour — teems with historic associations; 
and the works which he has left would fill a 
volume by themselves. We must confine our- 

1 " Auiatz la dcrreira chanso." ("Ravnouard, vol. iii., p. 12.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 179 

selves to the briefest outline of his life, resisting 
the temptation of its fascinating details, and to 
a few passages, taken almost at random, from 
poems which are fairly embarrassing from the 
abundance of their beaut}*. 

In Bernard we have once more, as so often 
among the troubadours, the association of lowly 
birth with lovely gifts. He was a son of the 
baker at the castle of Ventadorn, the seat of 
the viscounts of that name, Ions: famous anions: 
the petty sovereigns of Southern France for 
their enthusiastic patronage of the poetic art. 
Bernard's own seignior was Ebles III., of whom 
the Prior of Vigeois records, in his chronicle, 
that he " loved, even to old age, the songs of 
alacrity" — " usque ad senectam carmina alacri- 
tatis dilexit" — But Bernard was forty years 
old when Ebles died, consequently the latter 
was yet in his early prime when Bernard was 
born at Ventadorn, not far from the year 1130, 
and he speedily discovered, and carefully cul- 
tivated, the boy's talent. The not unnatural 
result was, that the young troubadour selected, 
as the object of his melodious homage, the 
youthful second wife of Ebles, Adelaide of 



180 TROUBADOURS AND TROU VERES. 

Montpellier. And here let the monkish biog- 
rapher take up the tale : " She [Adelaide] 
was a very lively and gentle lady, and was 
highly delighted with Bernard's songs, so that 
she became enamoured of him and he of her. 
. . . And their love had lasted a good while 
before her husband perceived it; but when he 
did he was angry, and had the lady very closely 
watched and guarded : wherefore she dismissed 
Bernard, and he wenl quite out of the country. 
lie betook himself to the Duchess of Norman- 
dy, who was illustrious and much admired, and 
well versed in matters of fame and honor, and 
knew how to award praise. And the songs of 
Bernard pleased her mightily, wherefore she 
gave him a most cordial welcome, and he resided 
at her court a long time, and was in love with 
her, and she with him ; and he made many fine 
songs about it. But while he was staying with 
her. the King of England, her husband, removed 
her from Normandy, and Bernard remained here, 
sad and sorrowful." Now this second royal 
lady-love of our aspiring poet was none other 
than the celebrated Eleanor, president of one 
of the most illustrious of the courts of love, 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 181 

the granddaughter of William of Poitiers, the 
divorced wife of Henry VII. of France, the 
wife of Henry II. of England, the merciless, but 
by no means immaculate, censor of the fair 
Rosamond Clifford, and the mother of Richard 
Coeur de Lion. When Bernard entered her 
service, in 1152, Eleanor was thirty-three years 
old, and fully ten years the senior both of the 
troubadour and of her husband, Henry II. But 
her beauty was perennial ; she had other charms 
which did not depend upon the freshness of 
youth, and her personal prestige was destined 
to last unweakened for many a long year, and to 
survive extraordinary vicissitudes of lot. If Ber- 
nard were ever profoundly in earnest, he would 
seem to have been so in some of the lines which 
he addressed to Eleanor ; but he was a very 
troubadour of the troubadours in his constant 
mingling of levity and tenderness, of graceful 
insouciance with keen and sudden pathos. Our 
first extract belongs to Adelaide's time ; and, 
though sufficiently far from simple, these verses 
have in them something of the fresh enthusiasm, 
half-confident and half-jealous, of a first expe- 
rience : — 



182 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Xo marvel is it if I sing ■ 

Better than other minstrels all; 

For more than they am I love's thrall, 
And all myself therein I fling, — 
Knowledge and souse, body and soul, 

And whatso power I have beside; 

The rein that doth my being guide 
Impels me to this only goal. 

His heart is dead whence doth not spring 

Love's odor, sweet and magical; 

His life doth ever on him pall 
Who knoweth not that blessed thing; 
Yea, God, who doth my lit' ,, control, 

Were cruel did he bid me hide 

A month, or even a day, denied 
The love whose rapture 1 extol. 

How keen, how exquisite the sting, 

( n that sweet odor! At its call 

An hundred times a day I fall 
And faint, an hundred rise and Bingl 
S fair the Bemblance of my dole, 

'T is lovelier than another's pride; 

If Buch the ill doth me betide, 
1 hap were more than I could thole! 

Yet haste, kind Heaven, the sundering 

True swains from false, great hearts from small ! 
The traitor in the dust bid crawl, 

The faithless to confession bring ! 

L " Non est mcrevelha s'ieu clian," etc. (Raynouard, vol. 
hi., p. 44.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 183 

Ah, if I were the master sole 

Of all earth's treasures multiplied, 

To see my lady satisfied 
Of my pure faith, I 'd give the whole ! 

And here are some fugitive strains out of that 
ever-recurring spring melody which no singer 
tried oftener or executed more sweetly than 
Bernard of Ventadora : — 

When tender leafage doth appear, 1 

When vernal meads grow gay with flowers, 
And aye with singing loud and clear 

The nightingale fulfils the hours, 
I joy in him and joy in every flower 
And in myself, and in my lady more. 
For when joys do inclose me and invest, 
My joy in her transcendeth all the rest. 

The following exhales the true spring sad- 
ness : — 

Well may I hail that lovely time 2 

When opening buds proclaim the spring, 

And, in the thickening boughs, their chime 
The birds do late and early ring. 

1 " Qnand erba vertz e fuelha pai'," etc. (Baynouard, vol. 
iii., p. 53.) 

2 " Bels m'es qu' ieu chant in aiselh mes," etc. (Kay- 
nouard, vol. iii., p. 77.) 



184 TROUBADOURS AXD TRO UTERES. 

Ah, then anew 
The yearning cometh, strong, 

For bliss more true, 
Whose lack my soul doth wrong, 
Which, if I have not, I must die erelong. 

The next is not quite so tender: — 

When leaves expand upon the hawthorn-tree, 1 
Ami the -mi's rays are dazzling grown and strong, 

And birds do voice their vows in melody 
And woo each other sweetly all day long, 

And all th»' world sways to love's Influence, 
Thou only art unwilling to be won. 
Proud beauty, in whose train I mope and moan 

Denied, and Beem but half a man to be. 

Then there is a very fanciful little piece in an 
odd but melodious measure, which runs thus: — 

Such is now my glad elation, 1 
All things change their seeming; 

All with flowers — white, blue, carnation — 
Hoary frosts are teeming; 

Storm and Hood but make occasion 

For my happy scheming; 
Welcome is my song's oblation, 

Praise outruns my dreaming. 

1 " Quand la fuel ha solre Valbre s'espan," etc. (Raynouard, 
vol. iii., p. 49.) 

2 " Tant ai mon cor pi en de joya" etc. (" Parnasse Occita- 
nien," page 7.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 185 

Oh, ay! this heart of mine 
Owns a rapture so divine, 
Winter doth in blossoms shine, 
Snow with verdure gleaming ! 

When my love was from me riven, 

Steadfast faith upbore me ; 
She for whom I so have striven 

Seems to hover o'er me ; 
All the joys that she hath given 

Memory can restore me ; 
All the days I saw her, even, 

Gladden evermore me. 
Ah , yes ! I love in bliss ; 
All my being tends to this ; 
Yea, although her sight I miss, 

And in France deplore me. 

Yet, if like a swallow flying 

I might come unto thee, 
Come by night where thou art lying, 

Verily I 'd sue thee, 
Dear and happy lady, crying, 

I must die or woo thee, 
Though my soul dissolve in sighing 

And my fears undo me. 
Evermore thy grace of yore 
I with folded hands adore, 
On thy glorious colors pore, 

Till despair goes through me. 

This threatens to become commonplace. 
Nevertheless the whole of the lyric sings itself 



186 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUYERES. 

in a very remarkable manner; and the remain- 
der, which need not be inflicted on the reader, 
is interesting from an allusion it contains to the 
story of Tristram and Iseult, with which the 
poet probably became acquainted in Normandy, 
and which is thus shown to have been popular 
and familiar as far back at least as the middle 
of the twelfth century. We now subjoin, though 
with much diffidence, from our conscious inabil- 
ity to do them justice, portions of two songs in 
Bernard's most perfect style, both of which ap- 
pear to have been addressed to Eleanor, — the 
one, perhaps, while she was yet in Normandy, 
the other after her departure for England. 

When I behold on eager wing 1 

The sky-lark soaring to the sun, 
Till e'en with rapture faltering 

He sinks in glad oblivion, 
Alas, how fain b re I 

The Bame ecstatic fate of fire! 
Yea, of a truth I know not why 

My heart melts not with its desire! 

Methought that I knew every tiling 
Of love. Alas my lore was none! 

For helpless now my praise I bring 
To one who still that praise doth shun, 

1 u Qnand vei la laudeta mover" etc. (Ravnouard, vol. 
iii., p. 68.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 187 

One who hath robbed me utterly 

Of soul, of self, of life entire, 
So that my heart can only cry 

For that it ever shall require. 

For ne'er have I of self been king, 

Since the first hour, so long agone, 
When to thine eyes bewildering, 

As to a mirror, I was drawn. 
There let me gaze until I die ; 

So doth my soul of sighing tire, 
As at the fount, in days gone by, 

The fair Narcissus did expire. 

The metre of the next is more constrain- 
ing : — 

When the sweet breeze comes blowing 1 

From where thy country lies, 
Meseems I am foreknowing 

The airs of Paradise. 
So is my heart o'erflowing 
For that fair one and wise 

Who hath my glad bestowing 
Of life's whole energies, 
For whom I agonize 

Whithersoever going. 

I mind the beauty glowing, 

The fair and haughty eyes, 
Which, all my will o'erthrowing, 

Made me their sacrifice. 

1 " Quand la douss' aura venta." (Raynouard, vol. iii., 
p. 84.) 



188 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

Whatever mien tliou'rt showing, 

Why should I this disguise? 
Yet let me ne'er be ruing 

Our of thine old repli 

Mian's daring wins the prize, 
But fear is his undoing. 

We come now to the name of William of 
Cabestaing, and the reader is requested to accept 

for just what it is worth the tragic tradition of 
him and his lady-love. Incredible as the tale 
appears, it La given with but trifling variations 

by an unusual number of writers; and, in the 
absence of all conflicting testimony, we, at least, 
shall not attempt to mar its horrible unity. 
Listen to the ancient biographer: — 

•• William of Cabestaing was a cavalier of the 
country of Rossillon, which borders on Catalonia 

and Xarbonne. He was a very attractive man 
in person, and accomplished in arms and courtesy 
and service. Xow in his country there was a 
lady called Lady Soremonda [elsewhere she 
is called Margaret], the wife of Raymond of 
Castle Rossillon ; and Raymond was high-born 
and evil-minded, brave and fierce, rich and 
proud. And William of Cabestaing loved the 
lady exceedingly and made songs about her, 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 189 

and the lady, who was young and gay, noble 
and fair, cared more for him than for any one 
else in the world. And this was told to Ray- 
mond of Castle Rossillon, who, being a jealous 
and passionate man, made inquiries and found 
that it was true, and set a watch over his wife. 
And there came a day when Raymond saw 
William pass with but few attendants, and he 
killed him. Then he had his head cut off, and 
the heart taken out of his body. And the head 
he had carried to his castle, and the heart he 
had cooked and seasoned, and gave it to his 
wife to eat. And when the lady had eaten it, 
Raymond of Castle Rossillon said to her, ' Do 
you know what you have eaten ? ' She said, 
1 No, except that it was a very good and savory 
viand.' Then he told her that it was the heart 
of William of Cabestaing which she had eaten, 
and to convince her he made them show her the 
head ; which when the lady saw and heard she 
swooned, but presently came to herself and 
said, ' My lord, you have given me such excel- 
lent food that I shall eat no more at all.' When 
he heard this, he sprang upon her with his sword 
drawn and would have smitten her upon the 



190 TROUBADOURS AND TnOUVERES. 

head, but she ran to the balcony and flung her- 
self over, and perished on the spot. The ti- 
dings flew through Rossillon and all Catalonia, 
that William of Cabestaing and the lady had 
come to this dreadful end, and that Raymond 
had given William's heart to the lady to eat. 
And there was great Borrow and mourning in all 
that region, and at last tin' story was told to the 
King of Aragon, who was the seignior both of 
Raymond of ('astir Rossillon and of William of 
Cabestaing. Then the king went to Perpignan, 
in Rossillon, and summoned Raymond to appear 

•re him. And when Raymond was come, the 
king had him seized, and took away from him 
all his castles and every thing else which lie 
had. and caused the cables to be destroyed, and 
put him in prison. But William of Cabestaing 
and the lady he had conveyed to Perpignan and 
. buried under a monument before the door of the 
church, and the manner of their death he had 
depicted on the monument, and gave orders that 
all the ladies and cavaliers in the country of 
Rossillon should visit the monument every year. 
And Raymond of Castle Rossillon died miser- 
ably in the King of Aragon's prison." This king 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 191 

must have been Alphonse IT., who held the 
suzerainty of Rossillon in 1181, and who had no 
successor of his own name upon the throne of 
Aragon for nearly two hundred years. The 
seventy of the punishment which he inflicted 
marks the deep impression made by Rajmiond's 
brutal revenge, and the extraordinary loathing 
which it excited. The story was too fascinating 
in its horror not to be repeated with other 
names ; and accordingly we have the tale of Raoul 
(or Renard), Chatelain de Coucy, who died at 
the siege of Acre in 1192 and in his last moments 
requested the friend who attended him to have 
his heart preserved and to carry it home to his 
mistress, the Lady of Fayel. The Lord of Fayel 
intercepted the relic and followed the example of 
Raymond of Rossillon , and the lady starved herself 
to death. De Coucy's commission was a probable 
one enough, and accords with the reckless roman- 
ticism of the time ; but the end of the story is 
doubtless borrowed from that of the lovers of Ros- 
sillon. Read by the lurid light of this monstrous 
tale, the verses of William of Cabestaing seem ani- 
mated by a peculiarly personal force and inten- 
sity ; and if the reader does not discover this in 



192 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

the following specimens, he may consider the 
translator to blame : — 

There is who spurns the l» 4 af, and turns l 

The stateliest flower of all to cull; 
So on life's topmost bough sojourns 

My Lady, the most beautiful ! 
Wlmm with his own nobility 

Our lonl hath graced, so Bhe may move 

In glorious worth our lives above, 

Yet BOft with all humility. 

Her pleading look my spirit shook 

And won my fealty long ago; 
My heart's-blood Btronger impulse took, 

Freshening my colors; and yet so, 
No otherwise discovering 

My love, I bode. Now, lady mine, 

At last, before thy thronged shrine, 
I also lay my offering. 

The next is yet more fervid and exalted : 

The visions tender 2 

Which thy love giveth me 
Still bid me render 

My vows in song to thee; 
Gracious and slender 

Thine image I can see, 
Where'er I wend, or 

What eyes do look on me. 

1 "Aissi cum selh que laissa 7 fudh." (Raynouard, vol. 
iii., p. 113.) 

2 " La clous consire." (Raynouard, vol. iii.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 193 

Yea, in the frowning face 
Of uttermost disgrace, 
Proud would I take my place 

Before thy feet, 
Lady, whose aspect sweet 
Doth my poor self efface, 
And leave but joy and praise. 

Who shall deny me 

The memory of thine eyes? 
Evermore by me 

Thy lithe, white form doth rise. 
If God were nigh me 

Alway, in so sure wise, 
Quick might I hie me 

Into his Paradise ! 

This was, perhaps, the strain which the trou- 
badour was trying on the day when Raymond 
overtook him " followed by but few attendants." 



13 






THE SOXGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 

II. 

"|3ASSING by the names of Gui d'Uisel, who 
bore a part in some rather spirited tensons, 
or poetical dialogues, yet extant, but whose 
other poems arc deficient in tenderness and 
grace ; of Gaucelm Faidit, of whom the record 
says, that "he went about the world for twenty 
years without making either himself or his songs 
acceptable;" of Peire Roger and Peirol, Ave 
come to those of the two Arnauts, — 'Arnaut 
Daniel and Arnaut de Maroill, or Marveil. To 
Arnaut Daniel was awarded, within a century 
after his death, distinguished praise by botli 
Dante and Petrarch. Dante describes, in the 
twenty-sixth canto of the " Purgatorio," a 
meeting with him in the shades; and Petrarch, 
speaking of him and Arnaut de Maroill, calls 
the latter " the less famous Arnaut." Judging 
by those of their remains which we possess, the 
distinction seems a very strange one. The 
verses of Arnaut Daniel are chiefly remarkable 



SOXGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 195 

for an extraordinary ingenuity and complexity 
in the arrangement of their rhymes, for verbal 
conceits which are necessarily untranslatable, 
and for the first introduction into the Romance 
rhythm of a sort of verbal echo, which was 
afterwards much more skilfully managed by 
Raimon de Miraval. But the modest beauties 
of Arnaut de Maroill's verse are at least of a 
universal and enduring kind. This is his story : 
" Arnaut de Maruelh was of the bishopric of Peir- 
agorc, of a castel [that is, a castle domain] named 
Maruelh, a clerk, and lowly born. And because 
he could not live on his letters [a difficulty not 
confined to Provence and the twelfth century], 
he travelled about the world, and he knew how 
to find , and was very skilful. And his stars led 
him to the court of the Countess of Burlas, a 
daughter of the celebrated Count Raymond, 1 
and wife of that Viscount of Beziers who was 
surnamed Taillefer. This Arnaut sang well 
and was a good reader of romance. He was 
handsome, too, and the countess distinguished 
him greatly. So he became enamoured of her 
and made songs about her, but dared not com- 
municate them to her, wherefore he said that 
1 This was Raymond V. of Toulouse. 



196 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

others had made them. But love compelled 
him, as he says in one song : — 

■ The frank bearing which I cannot forget,' etc. 

This was the song in which he discovered his 
love. And the countess did not repulse him, 
hut heard his prayer and encouraged him \ for 
she'put him in armor and gave him the honor 
of singing and finding for her. So he was a 
man esteemed at court. Then made he many 
1 songs by which we judge that he had great 
sorrow and great joy." 

4 * You have heard how Arnaut came to love 
the Countess of Burlas, the daughter of the 
brave Count Raymond, and mother of that Vis- 
count de Beziers whom the French slew when 
they took Carcassonne. 1 The viscountess was 
called l)e Burlas, because she was born in the 
castle of Burlas. She liked Arnaut well, and 
King Alphonse (of Castile), who also had de- 
signs upon her, perceived her kindness for the 

1 In 1209, at the beginning of the Albigenses war. This 
Viscount de Beziers was the chivalric Raymond Roger, the 
young and far braver nephew of Raymond VI. of Toulouse. 
He was not, however, killed at the siege, but languished three 
months in prison, at the end of which time the execrable Simon 
de Mont fort gave orders that he should "die of dysentery/' 
and he was accordingly poisoned. 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 197 

troubadour. And the king was extremely jeal- 
ous ; ... so he accused her concerning Arnaut, 
and said so much, and made her say so much, 
that she gave Arnaut his dismissal, and forbade 
him to come into her presence any more, or to 
sing of her. When Arnaut received his conge, 
he was sorrowful above all sorrow, and went 
away from her and her court like a man in 
despair. He went to William of Montpellier, 
who was his friend and seignior, and stayed 
with him a great while ; and there he plained 
and wept, and made that song which says : — 

* Mot eran dous miei cossir.' " 

We know the date of the Viscount cle Beziers's 
marriage to Adelaide de Burlas (1171), and 
from this we infer the principal dates of Ar- 
naut's history. He was certainly the contempo- 
rary of William of Cabestaing, and may well 
have heard from his own lips the later songs of 
Bernard of Ventadour, the best of which are 
hardly sweeter than this of Arnaut's : — 

Softly sighs the April air, 
Ere the coming of the May; 1 

1 " Bel m'es quan lo vens m'alena" (Raynouard, vol. iii., 
p. 208.) 



198 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

Of the tranquil night aware, 
Murmur nightingale and jay; 

Then, when dewy dawn doth rise, 
Every bird in his own tongue 

Wakes his mate with happy cries; 
All their joy abroad is flung. 

Gladness, lo ! is everywhere 

When the first Leaf sees the day; 
And shall I alone despair, 

Turning from sweet love away? 
Something to my hear! replies, 

Thou too wast for rapture strung; 
Wherefore else the dreams that rise 

Round tlic; when the year is young? 

. than II<-1<mi yet more fair, 

Loveliest blossom of the May, 
B ---tints hath and Bunny hair, 

And a gracious mien and gay; 
Heart that soorneth all disguise, 

Lips where pearls of truth are hung, — 
God, who gives all sovereignties, 

Knows her like was never sung. 

Though she lead through long despair, 

I would never say her nay, 
If one kiss — reward how rare ! — 

Each new trial might repay. 
Swift returns I 'd then devise, 

Many labors, but not long. 
Following so fair a prize 

I could nevermore go wrong. 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 199 

There is a very long poem of Arnaut's in 
simple consecutive rhymes, in which the praises 
of the fair countess are prettily if somewhat 
monotonously chanted, and the palm is awarded 
her over a long list of heroines, whose names, 
however incongruous, betray some acquaintance 
with literature on our troubadour's part ; — Ro- 
docesta and Bibles, Blanchefleur and Semiramis, 
Thisbe, Leda, and Helen, Antigone, Ismene, 
and Iseult. And here is that final and fruitless 
plaint quoted by Arnaut's biographer : — 

Sweet my musings used to be, 1 
Without shadow of distress, 
Till the queen of loveliness, 
Lowly, mild, yet frank as day, 
Bade me put her love away; 

Love so deeply wrought in me. 
And because I answered not, 
Nay, nor e'en her mercy sought, 
All the joy of life is gone, 
For it lived in her alone. 

O my lady, hearken thee ! 
For thy wondrous tenderness, 
Nor my faltering cry repress ; 
Bid thy faithful servant stay; 
Deign to keep my love, I pray; 

Let me not my rival see ! 

1 "Mot eran dous miei cossir." (" Parnasse Occitanien," p. 17.) 



200 TROUBADOURS AND TROUViRES. 

That which never cost thee aught 
Were to me with rapture fraught. 
Who would grudge the sick man's moan 
When his pain is all his own? 

Thou art wise as thou art fair, 
And thy voice is ever kind; 
Thou for all dost welcome find, 

With a courtesy so bright, 

Praise of all it doth invite. 

Hope and comforting of care 
In thy smile are horn and live 
Wh thou dost arrive. 

Not my Love doth canonize, 
But the truth and thine own price. 

Unto one thus everywhere 
In the praise of men enshrined, 
A\ 'hat \s my tribute u n refuted ? 
And yet, lady of delight, 
True it is, however trite. 

He shall sway the balance fair 
Who a single grain doth give, 
Be the poise right sensitive. 
So might one poor word suffice 
To enhance thy dignities. 

It would be an interesting, if not edifying, 
study in the manners of the time, to consider 
minutely the long story of Raimon de Miraval's 
adventures. One of his early biographers re- 
marks, with charming simplicity, that he " loved 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 201 

a great many ladies, some of whom treated him 
well, and others ill. Some deceived him ; and 
to these he rendered like for like : but he never 
deceived honest and loyal ladies." It is also 
true that he was a favorite with famous and 
gallant princes, such as Peter II. of Aragon 
and Raymond Roger, before mentioned, the 
heroic defender of the Albigenses ; and that 
these princes vied with one another in heaping 
upon the troubadour presents of rich robes, and 
steeds and accoutrements of war ; whereby the 
beggarly cavalier, who had inherited only the 
fourth part of a small estate, was enabled to 
make a splendid appearance in the world. 
Nevertheless, although personally brave, he 
seems not to have been a man of generous 
nature, and the songs which he has left, though 
graceful sometimes, and very remarkable for 
their technical ingenuity, show few traces of 
genuine feeling. Raimon de Miraval's first 
mistress was the notorious Loba de Penautier, 
the wife of a wealthy lord of Carbares, of whom — 
that is, of Loba — we shall hear more in con- 
nection with Peire Vidal. The fervor and sin- 
cerity of the relations of. these two may be 



202 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

guessed from the fact that Loba, who was 
besieged by numerous lovers, made a feint of 
encouraging Raimon, because she wished to con- 
ceal her real passion for the Count de Foix, also 
honorably memorable for the part he bore in the 
religious wars. " For," observes the historian, 
wit h the same incredible naivetS as before, " a lady 
was considered lost who openly accepted a power- 
ful baron as her lover, " Raimon seems to have 
continued his formal homage for some little time 
after lie perfectly understood the state of the 
case between Loba and De Foix. But at last 
he wearied of the game, as our readers would 
certainly weary, were we to attempt giving 
them any thin;.;' like a circumstantial account, 
or even a complete list, of the poet's numerous 
affaires. We pass directly from his first " attach- 
ment " to his last, the object of which was also a 
lady of Carbares, apparently a younger sister-in- 
law of Loba, one who herself made some unusual 
advances to the troubadour. The sport of these 
two experienced lovers was interrupted in 1208 
by the opening of the crusade against the Albi- 
genses ; that cruelest of religious wars, in which 
the early Provencal poetry virtually received its 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 203 

death-blow. Raimon de Miraval was shut up, 
with the Count of Toulouse, in the capital of the 
latter, while Beziers and Carcassonne fell before 
the onslaught of Simon de Montfort. Thence 
when Peter II. of Aragon had come to their as- 
sistance, he addressed to the Spanish prince some 
animated verses, foretelling that, if successful, he 
would make his name as terrible to the French 
as it had hitherto been to the Saracens. But 
Peter fell in the battle of Muret, on the 12th 
of September, 1213, and Raimon followed the 
flight into Aragon of the Counts of Toulouse 
and Foix, and there died, not long after, in a 
monastery at Lerida. We have attempted, in 
the paraphrase which follows, to give some idea 
of the mechanical complexity of Raimon's ver- 
sification, and of the verbal or syllabic echo, 
spoken of before, which Arnaut Daniel had 
introduced : — 

Fair summer time doth me delight, 
And song of birds delights no less; 
Meadows delight in their green dress, 
Delight the trees in verdure bright : 

And far, far more delights thy graciousness, 

Lady, and I to do thy will delight. 

Yet be not this delight my final boon, 

Or I of my desire shall perish soon ! 



204 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

For that desire, most exquisite 

Of all desires, I live in stress, 

Desire of thy rich comeliness. 

Oh, come, and my desire requite! 

Though doubling that desire by each caress, 

Is my desire not Bingle in thy sight? 

Let me not, then, desiring, Bink undone. 

To love's high joys, desire be rather prone! 

X i alien joy will I invite, 

But joy in thee to all excess; 

Joy in thy grace, nor e'en confess 

Whatso might do my joy despite. 

So deep the joy, 1 1 1 \' lady, no distress 

That joy >hall master; for thy beauty's light 
Such joy hath Bhed for each day it hath shone, 
Joyless 1 cannot l>e while I live on. 

This is enough. We have just managed to 
Lint at the labored quaintness of the verse. 
But that peculiarity of rhythm which we have 
called an echo, should have, and very likely did 
have, a name of its own. There is a hackneyed, 
vet unspoiled, strain of melody in the death 
scene in " Lucia," of which the effect upon 
the ear is almost precisely similar to this in 
the Provencal. 

It would be unfair to the reader to transcribe, 
otherwise than literally, the manuscript biogra- 
phy of the absurdest of men and troubadours, 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 205 

Peire Vidal. Thus it runs : " Peire Vidal was 
of Toulouse, the son of a tanner. He was the 
best singer in the world, and a good finder; and 
he was the most foolish man in the world, 
because he thought every thing tiresome except 
verse. . . . He said much evil of others, and 
made some verses for which a cavalier de San 
Gili had his tongue cut, because he proclaimed 
himself the accepted lover of San Gili's wife. 
But Oc del Baux treated the wound, and cured 
him. So, when he was healed, he went away 
beyond the sea, and brought thence a Greek 
woman whom he had married in Cyprus; and 
she gave him to understand that she was the 
granddaughter of the Emperor of Constantino- 
ple, and that, through her, he ought by rights 
to have the empire. Wherefore he put all his 
substance into a navy, because he intended to go 
and conquer the empire ; and he assumed the 
imperial arms, and had himself called emperor 
and his wife empress. He courted all the fine 
ladies he saw, and besought them for their love, 
and talked Oc to them, for he deemed himself 
a universal lover, and that any one would die 
for him. And he always had fine horses and 



206 TROUBADOURS AND TRO UTERES. 

armor, and an imperial chair (or throne), and 
thought he was the best knight in the world, 
and the most loved of ladies. Peire Vidal, as 
I have said, courted all fine ladies ; . . . and, 
among others, he courted my Lady Adelaide, 
the wife of Barral, the Lord of Marseilles, . . . 
and Barral knew it well. . . . So, there came 
a day when Peire Vidal knew that Barral was 
away, and the lady alone in her chamber, and 
he went in and found her sleeping, and kneeled 
down and kissed her lips. Feeling the kiss, and 
thinking that it was Lord Barral, she started 
Up, smiling, then looked and saw that it was 
that fool of a Peire Vidal (# vi lo fol de Peire 
77</'//), and began to make a great outcry. Her 
women rushed in, crying i What is this? ' And 
Peire Vidal fled. Then the lady sent for Lord 
Barral, and loudly complained of Peire for kiss- 
ing her, and wept, and prayed that he might be 
punished. Then Lord Barral, like a brave man, 
made light of the thing, and reproved his wife 

for her distress But Peire Vidal was 

frightened, and took ship for Genoa, where he 
remained until he went over-seas with King 
Richard. . . . He remained a long time in 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 207 

foreign parts, not daring to return to Provence 
until Lord Barral, who was well disposed toward 
him, as you have heard, prayed his wife to par- 
don the kiss, and make him (Peire) a present 
of it. So Barral sent Peire his wife's good 
wishes, and ordered him to return. And back 
he came, with the greatest rejoicing, to Mar- 
seilles, and was well received by everybody, and 
every thing was forgiven him ; wherefore Peire 
made the famous song : — 

'Pos tornat soi en Proensa.' 

. . . [Afterwards] he fell in love with Loba 
de Penautier, and with Madame Stephania, of 
Sardinia, and with Lady Raimbauda de Biolh. 
Loba was of Carbares, and out of compliment 
to her Peire Vidal had himself called Wolf, and 
wore a wolf on his arms. And he caused him- 
self to be hunted in the mountains of Carbarns, 
with dogs and mastiffs and leverets, as wolves 
are hunted ; and he wore a wolf-skin, to give 
himself the appearance of a wolf. And the shep- 
herds, with their dogs, hunted him, and abused 
him so that he w r as carried for dead to the inn 
of Loba de Penautier. As soon as she knew 



208 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

that it was Peire Vidal, she began to scoff at 
him for his folly, and her husband likewise, and 
they received him with great merriment. But 
her husband had him taken and conveyed to a 
retired place, and did the best he could with 
him, and kept him till he was well." 

Happily the craze of Peire appears chiefly in 
his actions, and many of his verses are unusually 
sane and elegant. We give the song mentioned 
above as addressed to Adelaide on his return to 
Marseilles. The grace and good-nature of the 
original sufficed, no doubt, to atone for its un- 
deniably -aucy and perfunctory air. It is also 
interesting from the allusion in the sixth verse 
— which is the fifth in Raynouard's text — to 
the fancied return of King Arthur, either in the 
person of Coeur de Lion himself, in whose train 
Peire went to the Holy Land, or, more prob- 
ably, in that of his presumptive heir, Arthur of 
Brittany, the victim of John 

Xow into Provence returning, 1 
Well I know my call to sing 
To my lady some sweet thing, 
Full of gratitude and yearning. 

1 " Pos tornatz sui en Proensa." (Raynouard, vol. iii. p 
321.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 209 

Such the tribute still whereby 
Every singer, nobly taught, 
Favor of his queen hath bought, 
Ever loving learnedly ; 
Like the rest, then, why not I? 

Sinless, and yet pardon earning 
By the penitence I bring, 
Grace from grievance gathering, 
Yea, and hope from anger burning! 
Bliss in tears I can descry, 
Sweet from bitter I have brought, 
Courage in despair have sought, 
Gained, in losing, mightily, 
And in rout met victory ! 

Fearless, then, my fate concerning, 
In my choice unwavering, 
If, at last, I see upspring 
Honor in the place of scorning. 
All true lovers far and nigh 
Shall take comfort from the thought 
Of the miracle I wrought, 
Drawing fire from snow, and aye 
Sweetest draught the salt wave by 1 

I can hail her very spurning, 
Bow to her abandoning, 
Though her mien my heart should wring, 
Well her sovereign right discerning 
Me to give, or sell, or buy! 
14 



210 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

That man's wisdom, sure, is naught 
Who would bid me loathe my lot. 
Pain she gives is, verily, 
But a kind of ecstasy I 

Blame Dot, then, my hope's adjourning: 
I ! we the Britons not their king, 
Arthur, for whose tarrying 

I. ig lit*- land did Bit in mourning? 

Nor ran any me deny 

Tlit* nip- prize for which I fought, 

Tin' on-- kiss that once I caught. 

5 : . tin* theft <>t' days u r,, ne by 

She hath made a charity ! 

Once more, in the case of Raimbaut de Va- 
queiras, we are fain to throw aside all attempt 
at critical examination and selection, and simply 

quote the text of the early biographer. The 
reader will please compare the manner of telling 

the tale of the mantle with the similar incident 
of the sword and circlet in the story of " Pelleas 
and Etard" or Ettarre, so solemnly and touchingly 
rehearsed by Tennyson in the eighth idyl of the 
complete edition. It will furnish him once for 
all with a measure of the strange difference in 
native moral sense between the races who cul- 
tivated the troubadour and the trouvere poetry. 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 211 

" Raimbaut de Vaqueiras was the son of a 
poor cavalier of Provence, of the Castle of 
Vaqueiras. And Raimbaut became a jongleur 
and was a long while with the Prince of Orange, 
William of Baux. He was skilled in singing 
and in making couplets and sirventes, and the 
Prince of Orange did him great honor and favors 
for it, and made him to be generally known and 
praised. Yet Raimbaut left him (the Prince of 
Orange) and went to the Marquis Boniface of 
Montferrat, and was long established at his 
court also. And he grew in wit and wisdom and 
soldierly accomplishments, and became enam- 
oured of the marquis's sister, nry Ladj r Beatrice, 
the wife of Henry of Carret, and found many 
good songs about her, and it was thought that 
she was favorably disposed toward him. Now 
you have heard who Raimbaut was, and how he 
came to honor, and by whom. So, as I said, 
when the marquis had knighted him, he fixed his 
affections on my Lady Beatrice, who was also the 
sister of my Lady Adelaide de Salutz. He loved 
and desired her greatly, taking care that no one 
should suspect it, and he enhanced her reputa- 
tion very much, and gained for her many friends, 



212 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

both men and women. And she received him 
flatteringly, but he was dying of apprehension 
because lie dared not openly ask her love nor 
confess that he had set Ins heart upon her. 
But as a man distraught, he told her that he 
loved a very distinguished lady, and knew her 
very intimately, but dared not speak, nor betray 
his feeling, nor ask her for her love, because of 
her high consideration. And lie' prayed her in 
God's name to advise him whether he should 
speak out the wish of bis heart, or perish in 
silent devotion. Thai gentle lady, my Lady 
Beatrice, when she heard this, and knew the 
admiration of Iiaimbaut, having plainly per- 
ceived before that he- was dying of love for her, 
was touched by his passion and his piety. And 
she said, * Raimbaut, it is well known that every 
faithful friend loves a gentle lady in such wise 
that he fears to betray his love. But sooner 
than die, I would counsel him to speak and pray 
her to take him for a servitor and friend. For 
if she is wise and courteous she will not despise 
him. So this is the advice which I give you. 
Ask her to receive you for her cavalier. For 
you are such an one that any lady in the 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 213 

universe might so take you, as Adelaide, the 
Countess of Salutz holds Peire Vidal; and the 
Countess of Burlas, Arnaut cle Maroill ; and 
rny Lady Mary, Gaucelm Faidit ; and the Lady 
of Marseilles, Folquet.' . . . When Lord Raim- 
baut heard the comfortable advice which she 
gave, ... he told her that she was herself the 
lady whom he loved, and concerning whom he 
had asked advice. And my Lady Beatrice told 
him that it was w^ell done, . . . and that she 
would accept him for her cavalier. Lord Raim- 
baut did then exalt her fame to the utmost of 
his ability, and it was then he made the song 
which begins, — 

1 Era m' requier sa costum e son us/ 
" Now it came to pass that the lady lay down 
and fell asleep beside him, and the marquis, her 
husband, who loved her well, found them so, 
and was wroth. But, like a wise man, he for- 
bore to touch them, only he took his own mantle 
and covered them with it, and took that of 
Raimbaut and went his way. And when Raim- 
baut arose he knew well what had happened, 
and he took the mantle of the marquis and 
sought him straightway, and kneeled before him 



214 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

and prayed for mercy. And the marquis per- 
ceived that Raimbaut knew how he had been 
discovered, and lie recalled all the pleasure 
which Raimbaut had given him in divers places. 
And because Raimbaut had said softly, in order 
that he might not be understood to be bespeak- 
ing pardon, thai he would forgive the marquis for 
tting on his robe, those who overheard thought 
that all this was because the marquis had taken 
Raimbaut's mantle. And the marquis forgave 
him and made answer that lie would wear his 
mantle no more. And only they two under- 
- od it. After that it came to pass that the 
marquis went with his forces into Roumania, and 
with great help from the church conquered the 
kingdom of Thessalonica. And there Lord 
Raimbaut distinguished himself by the feats 
which he performed, and there he was rewarded 
with great lands and revenues, and there he 
died. And concerning the deeds of his liege 
lord he made a song which has been transmitted 
by Peire Yidal which begins, — 

' Cant ai ben dig del Marquis/ M 

It was in 120J: that Raimbaut embarked from 
Venice for the East, his master, Montferrat, 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 215 

having been chosen leader of the expedition of 
that year in place of Thibaut of Champagne, 
who had died just as all things were made ready 
for departure two years before. This was the 
famous expedition which digressed to Constan- 
tinople, and expended its consecrated energies 
in the capture of that city and the subjugation 
of the Greek empire. The Marquis of Mont- 
ferrat received the kingdom of Thessalonica as his 
share in the spoils of this victory, and thence he 
overran nearly the whole of Greece. Raimbaut 
was constantly with him and won abundant lau- 
rels ; but underneath all the excitement and 
splendor of this adventurous life he seems to have 
carried a heart haunted by homesick longings and 
melancholy presentiments, which were soon to be 
justified. He fell in battle in the same year with 
his master, 1207, possibly upon the same field. 
The song in which he is said to have celebrated 
the fame of Montferrat is invariably ascribed in 
the collections to Peire Vidal. There is also an 
extremely interesting piece, transcribed at length 
by Fauriel, a sort of impetuous declaration of 
independence of the tyranny of love, the text of 
which is not in Raynouard's collection, nor in 



216 TROUBADOURS AXD TRO UTERES. 

any other accessible to ourselves. We give a 
few verses out of the song first cited in the Life 
just quoted, and the whole of one of Raimbaut's 
latest pieces, a really noble and affecting lament 
composed in Rouinania : — 

Now Love, who will have Bighs, desires, and tears, 1 
Demands his wonted tribute, even of me. 
And [, who have received the gift to 

The loveliesl lady of all mortal years, 

I v. She is my surety Bincere, 
Love will be glorious gain, and never Lot 
Greal are my hoot* and courage, even because 

I seek the one best treasure of our sph< i 

For since my Lady hath not any peers, 
Matchless in all the past my Love must be; 
Thisbe Loved Pyramus less utterly. 

Hers am I. and my vow Bhe kindly hears; 

Y . and thus Lifted o'er all others here, 
And very rich, and versed in honor's laws, 
for the worthy keeps h applause, 

While the base know her lofty and austere. 

"Wherefore not Percival, when to loud cheers 

The red knight's arms in Arthur's court bore he, 
Received his honors more exultantly 
Than I, nor ever keener death-pang tears 

1 "Era m' requier sa costum e son us." (Raynouard, vol. iii., 
P- 258.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 217 

The breast of Tantalus than I should bear, 
Did she her bounty stint, from whatso cause, 
Who is earth's clearest, without any flaws, 

And keen of wit, and innocent of fear. 

Of the lay which follows, it may be remem- 
bered that Mistral quotes the first verse, to illus- 
trate the tender sorrows of his friend Aubanel. 
Owing to the length of the piece, and the diffi- 
culty of dividing it,« I have, for once, abandoned 
the attempt to keep the same rhyme in the cor- 
responding lines of each stanza, but otherwise 
the form of the original is preserved. I have 
not been able to establish the identity of the 
" English lord " — evidently a man of note, 
though not the king — to whom the poem seems 
to have been addressed, in reply, perhaps, to 
some friendly challenge : — 

Nor winter-tide, nor Easter-tide, 1 
Xor cloudless air, nor oak-wood fair, 
Gladden me more; for joy seems care, 
And heavy all was once my pride ; 
And leisure hours are weary while 
Now hope no more doth on me smile. 
And I, who sprang to gallantry 
And love like fishes in the sea, 

1 " No m' agrad ivers ni pascors." ("Parnasse Occitanien," 
p. 8.) 



218 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

Now both of these are from me gone, 
Live like an exile, sad and lone. 
All other life to me is death, 
All other joy discourageth. 



The flower of love is fallen away. 

And the sweet fruit; the grass and grain, 

1 sang full many a pleasant Btrain 

Thereof, and honor found that way. 

But Love, thai Lifted me o'er all, 
Ay, Love itself hath wrought my fall. 

And but that 1 would Boon] to .-how 

A ward fa<-f before my \\ 

1 M put my Life out like a flame, 

And quench my deeds, and blot my name; 

So deepeneth in my memory 

Despair that one day brought to me. 



But honor's voice commands me thus: 
•• Thou shalt not, in thy mood forlorn, 
Thy foes fulfil with gleeful scorn, 
Of thine old praise oblivious." 
Nor will I. Blows I yet can deal, 
And wear a merry mask with skill 
Before a Greek or Latin horde, 
While he who girt me with my sword, 
My marquis, doth the pagan fight. 
For since this world first saw the light, 
Xever hath God such conflict thrown 
On any race as on onr own. 



SOXGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 219 

Resplendent arms and warriors bold, 
And battle given, and joust arrayed, 
Engine and siege and flashing blade, 
And toppling walls, or new, or old, 
As in a dream, I hear, I see ; 
For what save love availeth me? 
Yea, I myself, in harness brave, 
Ride forth to strike, to fell, to save, 
And laurel still, and treasure, win, 
But never more that joy within ; 
The world is but a desert-shore, 
And my songs comfort me no more. 

Not Alexander in his pride, 

Nor Charlemagne, nor Ludovic; 

Held court like ours. Not Emeric, 

Nor Roland, with his warriors tried, 

E'er won so great a victory 

O'er half so rich a realm as we. 

Laws have we given, and they 're obeyed, 

And kings and dukes and emperors made, 

And decked our castles for delight, 

In Mussulman or Arab sight, 

And cleared each way, and oped each gate, 

From Brindes to St. Georges' s Strait. 

Yet what to me, brave English lord, 
Are spoils like these and glory worth, 
Who sought no other boon on earth 
Save to adore and be adored? 
Deem not my splendid heritage 
A single sorrow can assuage. 



220 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

The more jncreaseth here my pelf, 
The more I mourn and scorn myself. 
My fair and gracious cavalier 1 
Is wroth with me, is far from here; 
A wound like mine no healing hath, 
lint ever-growing pain and wrath. 

Yet thou, Bweet Beigneur, warrior high, 

Great both in arms and courtesy, 

Thou dost a little comforl give, 
Tempting me yet awhile to live. 

We twain will make Damascus cower, 
Jerusalem restore to power, 

And wrest the sacred Syrian land 

From pagan Turks 1 relentless hand. 
Shame on us, Laggard pilgrims all, 

B • those \\lx> nol.lv fight and fall! 
Shame on our courts, and court we strife! 
For death availeth more than life! 

In this lament of Raimbaut tie Vaqueiras, 
we seem to hear the trumpet contending with 
the lute; and in the clang of its abrupt close, 
the harsher strain prevails. It was ominous 
of the change which was immediately to pass 
upon Provencal song, the rapid, but not inglo- 

1 Raimbaut called Beatrice his " Bel Cavalier," because he 
once surprised her practising a sword exercise all by herself. 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 221 

rious, decline of which was already decreed. 
The domestic crusade of the Roman church 
against the heretics of Albigeois was formally 
inaugurated in 1208, one year after the death, 
in the Orient, of Raimbaut and his master, Bon- 
iface of Montferrat. We are rather used to 
regard that infamous war — the strange horrors 
by which it was attended, and the appalling 
desolation of some of earth's most delightful 
regions which it entailed — from a merely the- 
ological point of view. In reality, it was a 
conflict involving a great variety of social and 
political interests, and in its lingering catastro- 
phe many hopes perished which were wholly of 
this world. It was, in fact, or it became, a 
match between the great feudal nobles and the 
clergy ; between the princes of the province and 
the fast-growing central power of France, al- 
waj's highly orthodox, and in strict alliance with 
the court of Rome. It was hardly more than 
incidentally and symbolically the resistance of 
darkness to light ; priestly tyranny to the prog- 
ress of free thought ; regnant superstition to 
simple faith. The struggle lasted for about a 
generation, and our indignant sympathies are 



222 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

with the conquered side : less, however, because 
that side had a monopoly of piety, than because 
it was, broadly speaking', the side of chivalry, 
culture, and common sense. We are glad to 
find that our troubadours, almost to a man, es- 
poused the nobler and worse-fated cause ; but 
we can see that, from the nature of their avoca- 
tions and their personal relations with the great 
Provencal nobles, it could hardly have been 
otherwise. 

One of them, indeed, Folquet of Marseilles, 
whom the chagrin of disappointed love had 
early driven into the cloister, and who had been 
made Bishop of Toulouse while yet a compara- 
tively young man, won an immortality of dis- 
honor, by the ingenious atrocity with which he 
persecuted the heretics and their defenders; 
and one other, Perdigon, a man of considerable 
gifts, but of the basest origin, turned traitor to 
his seignior and his first patron, Raymond of 
Toulouse, and accompanied the embassy which 
went to Rome, under the leadership of William 
of Baux, to demand the intervention of the Pope 
on behalf of sound, old-fashioned doctrine. In 
his own person Perdigon was sufficiently pun- 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 223 

ished. His new master tired of him ; his apostasy 
to the cause of the south made him execrated 
among his countrymen ; he fell into abject pov- 
ertj r , and with difficulty found even a monastery 
to afford him an asylum in his last days. With 
these exceptions, the poets of Occitania were 
true to the cause of their country's independ- 
ence, both spiritual and political, and lifted up 
impassioned appeals against her subjugation. 

Some of their greatest names are most asso- 
ciated with this unquiet latter time. This is true 
of him whom the ancient authorities generally 
agree in pronouncing the first of Provengal 
poets, Guiraut de Bornelh, or Borneil. 1 " There 
was never a better troubadour," are the words 
of his biographer, " either among those who 
went before or those who came after him ; and 
the manner of his life was on this wise : all 
winter he studied in the school, 2 and all sum- 

1 Dante, however, in the "Purgatorio," expresses no little 
indignation with those who insist on ranking Guiraut ahove 
his own favorite, Arnaut Daniel. But Dante's literary judg- 
ments were apt to he biased. 

2 This confirms Fauriel's idea, that there were institutions 
where the troubadour poetry was formally taught. Fauriel 
even thinks that there must have been such before the days of 
William of Poitiers ; but of this there does not seem to be suf- 
ficient evidence. 



224 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

mer he journeyed from court to court, accom- 
panied by two jongleurs, who performed his 
songs. He no longer desired to many; but 
whatever he gained he gave to his poor rela- 
tives, or to the church of the town where he 
was horn/' There is something tantalizing in 
tin. 4 brevity of this notice, more particularly be- 
cause it conveys the idea of an unwonted se- 
riousness and nobility in the poet's character. 
And it is certain that Guiraut de Bornelh was the 
true maker and master of the ffAaft*0n,and that his 
love-poems, though occasionally obscure, have an 
emotional depth and an equality of power sur- 
passing those even of Bernard of Ventadour. 
When, in his later years, he swept the lyre with 
a Bterner hand, and bewailed his country's mis- 
fortunes, and the decadence of her chivalric 
glories, there was dignity in his grief, and even 
grandeur. The date of his death is disputed; 
but it could not well have occurred later than 
1230, and even then he must have been very 
old. 

The first half of the thirteenth century is also 
the epoch of Peire Cardenal. If Bernard of 
Ventadour was the sweetest minstrel among 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 225 

the troubadours, and Guiraut de Bornelh their 
loftiest poet, Peire Cardenal was indisputably 
the subtlest and most intellectual spirit among 
them all. His day was not an auspicious one 
for the conceits and amenities of love ; but his 
moral appeals and laments are full of wrathful 
eloquence, and die searches the dark places of 
human destiny, the origin of evil, the mystery 
of free-will, with a desperate intrepidity almost 
equal to that of Omar Khayam. " Who," he 
cries, in the beginning of one of his pieces, "-de- 
sires to hear a sirvente woven of grief, embroid- 
ered with anger ? I have spun it already, and I 
can make its warp and woof." 1 And there is 
another, in which he rehearses the bold defence 
which he will make when he finds himself ar- 
raigned before the judgment-bar of God. This 
does not come properly within our scope ; and 
we shall therefore return to our first theme, and 
close these fragmentary and, as many may well 
think, arbitrary illustrations, with three speci- 
mens of a peculiar order of love-song, the au- 
bado, or morning counterpart of the serenade. 

1 " Qui volra sirventes auzir?" (Raynouard, "Lexique Ro- 
man," vol. i., p. 446.) 

15 



226 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

Despite the superficial and apparently regular 
resemblance of sentiment and circumstance be- 
tween the three, the}' are as wide apart in time 
as possible, and their dates embrace nearly the 
whole illustrious period of Oceitanian song. 
That of the first, which we incline to regard 
as the most perfect flower of Provencal poesy, 
cannot be precisely fixed; but it is apparently 
very early, and the nameless author was un- 
doubtedly a woman. The second was written 
by Guiraut de Bornelh in his prime. The third 
is by the last of the noteworthy troubadours, 
Bertrand of Alamanon. The fanciful song of 
Magali, in ** Mireio," is also an aubado^ thor- 
oughly modem and highly artificial. If the 
leader will take the trouble to compare it with 
the " simple and sensuous " lay which follows, 
he will fully realize all the likeness and the un- 
likeness existing between the reproduction and 
the reality. 

Under the hawthorns of an orchard-lawn, 1 
She laid her head her lovers breast upon, 
Silent, until the guard should cry the dawn. 
Ah God! Ah God! AYhy comes the day so soon? 

1 " Dans nn vergier en fuelha d'albespi." (Bartsch, " Chrestom- 
athie Provencale," p. 98.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 227 

T would the night might never have passed by ! 
So wouldst thou not have left me, at the cry 
Of yonder sentry to the whitening sky. 
Ah God! Ah God! Why comes the day so soon? 

One kiss more, sweetheart, ere the melodies 

Of early birds from all the fields arise ! 

One more, without a thought of jealous eyes! 

Ah God! Ah God! Why comes the day so soon? 

And yet one more under the garden wall; 

For now the birds begin their festival, 

And the day wakens at the sentry's call. 

Ah God! Ah God! Why comes the day so soon? 

'T is o'er! He 's gone. Oh, mine in life and death ! 
But the sweet breeze that backward wandereth, 
I quaff it, as it were my darling's breath. 
Ah God! Ah God! Why comes the day so soon? 

Fair was the lady, and her fame was wide, 
And many knights for her dear favor sighed ; 
But leal the heart out of whose depths she cried, 
Ah God! Ah God! Why comes the day so soon? 

Here, at least, there is absolute artlessness, 
a kind of divine abandonment. The next is a 
world away from this, in its conscious and re- 
strained fervor, separated from it as from a 
childish Eden, by the flaming sword of per- 
fectly-equipped chivalry. 



223 TROUBADOURS AND TROU VERES. 

All-glorious king, who dost illuminate 1 
All ways of men, upon thy grace I wait; 
Praying thy shelter for my spirit's queen, 
Whom all the darkling hours I have not seen, 
And now the dawn is near. 

Sleepest or wakest, lady of my vows? 

Oh, sleep qo more, but lift thy quiet brows; 

For now the Orient's most lovely .star 

Grows Large and bright, welcoming from afar 

The dawn that now is near. 

Oh, sleep do more, but gracious audience give, 
What time with the awakening birds 1 strive, 
Who seek the day amid the Leafage dark. 
To me, to me, not to that other, hark; 

Tor now the dawn is near. 

Undo aloft, most fair, thy window-bars, 
And Look upon the heaven and its stars, 
Ami to my steadfast watchfulness incline, 
And doubt me not, Lest Long regret be thine; 
Tor now the dawn is near. 

Aye since we parted in the eve agone, 
Slept have I none, but kneeled and prayed alone 
Unto the Son of Mary in the sky, 
To make thee mine until we both shall die; 
And now the dawn is near. 

1 " Reis glorios, verais lums e clardatz" (Raynouard, vol. iii., 
p. 313.) 



SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS. 229 

From thy balcony, lady, yesternight, 
Didst thou me to this vigil not invite? 
And was it, then, the suit, the song, to spurn 
Of one who would have died thy smile to earn? 
And now the dawn is near. 

Not so, not so! O heart fulfilled with bliss, 
What care I for the morns to follow this? 
For now the sweetest soul of mother born 
Folds her arms round me till I laugh to scorn 
That other I did fear! 

And this is the last : — 

A brave and merry cavalier 1 
Sang once unto his lady dear 
A song like this which ye shall hear. 
" Oh sweet, my soul, what comes," he said, 
u When day dawns and the night is fled? 
Ah ha! 
I hear the sentry's call afar ; 
Up and away! 
Behold, the day 
Comes following the day-star ! 

" Oh sweet, my soul, I would," said he, 
' ' That never dawn or day might be : 
So were we blest eternally ! 
At least if thou wilt have it so, 
I am thy friend where'er I go. 

1 " Un cavalier si jazia." (Raynouard, vol. v., p. 73.) 



230 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

„Ahha! 
I hear the sentry's call afar; 
Up and away! 
Behold, the day 

Comes following the day-star! 

" Oli Bweet, my bouI, whate'ei they say, 
There is qo grief Like ours to-day, 
When friend from friend is rent away. 
Alas! I know- too well," said he, 
11 How brief one happy night may be. 
All ha! 

I hear the Bentry's call afar; 

L'p and away! 

Behold, the day 
blowing the day-star! 

" Oh sweet, my soul, yield me belief: 
Afar from thee my course were brief; 
Slain were I. by my love and grief I 

I go, but I shall come again; 

Life without thee were void and vain. 
Ah ha! 
I hear the sentry's call afar; 
Up and away! 
Behold, the day 
Comes following the day-star! 

II Oh sweet, my soul, my way I take, 
Thine still, although the morning break; 
Forget me not, for God's dear sake. 



SOXGS OF THE TROUBAUOURS. 231 

My heart of hearts goes not with me, 
It stays for ever more with thee. 
Ah ha! 
I hear the sentry's call afar ; 
Up and away! 
Behold, the day 
Comes following the day-star! " 

In point of feeling, these lines are not to be 
compared with the others. In their sweet but 
lagging rhythm there is a strange mingling of 
languor and levity. They are, in fact, already 
a reminiscence, — the tenuous echo of a music 
passed by. 



THE ARTIIURIAD. 

T^ROUBADOURS and TrouvSres! The 

English-speaking student of the early Pro- 
vencal poetry feels himself constantly solicited 
and allured by the echoes of that antiphonal 
singing which men were beginning to essay 
north of the Loire, and which was fostered with 
especial enthusiasm at the Xorman court, and in 
the Xorman halls of our own ancestral England. 
While William of Poitiers boasted of the van- 
quished hearts that vied for his choosing, or 
dolorously deplored the loves and luxuries 
which lie left behind him when parting for 
the Holy Land, Wace was chanting the vic- 
tories of Polio in Normandy, the exploits of 
Brutus, and the woes of Lear ; and Marie (that 
prototype of the modern literary lady, who felt 
that it would be wrong to suffer her powers to 
lie idle) was weaving into her " Lay of the 
Honeysuckle " an incident from the amours of 
Cornish Tristram and Irish Isolt. These are 



THE ARTHURIAD. 233 

themes nearer to our Anglo-Norman hearts, or at 
least our imaginations, than most others of that 
primitive time : and when some of the foremost 
singers of our own generation apply themselves to 
illustrating the incomparable cj^cle of romances 
of which these are but the crude beginnings, we 
can no longer resist their fascination. 

It is to be hoped that all true lovers of the 
laureate will re-read the " Idyls of the King," 
in the edition of 1875. Here, for the first time, 
we have these memorable poems — so strangely 
named idyls, and so unfortunate in the long 
intervals at which they appeared, and in their 
lawless manner of straying before the public — 
arranged in an order which fairly exhibits their 
unity of purpose, their cumulative interest, and 
the matchless moral force and beauty of the one 
story of which they are all — the less equally 
with the greater — essential parts. We must 
also conclude, whether willingly or not, that 
the present is their final arrangement, since 
the author has himself added an epilogue or 
envoi, in which he formally presents to the 
reigning queen of England the complete series 
of poems, of which four of the most famous had 



234 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

been dedicated, on their first appearance, to the 
memory of the Prince Consort : — 

11 Thou my Queen, 
Not for itself, but through thy living love 
For one to whom I made it o'er his grave 
Sacred, accept this old, imperfect tale, 
N w-old, and Bhadowing sense at war with soul, 
Rather than that gray king whose Dame, a ghost, 

ana like a cloud man-shaped from mountain-peak, 
An ! urn and cromlech still; or him 

book or him of Malleor's." 

The fresh touches, which the reader familiar 
with the separate poems will detect in many 

parts of the united work', are almost all applied 

to the centra] figure of Arthur himself, — a 
figure which, despite its melancholy grandeur, 

more than One of the laureate's critics have 
heretofore pronounced the weakest in his hook. 
The outlines of that figure are now finished and 
strengthened. The lights of the king's destiny 

are enhanced, and its shadows deepened. The 

grandeur of his dream and the cruelty of his 
disappointment are set in more distinct and 
affecting contrast than before; and yet the 
changes and additions are made with so mas- 
terly a care and restraint, that the result — for 



THE ARTHURIAD. 235 

a wonder in the emendations of this or of any 
poet — is only and exceedingly beautiful. Some 
reasons will by and by be given for the private 
fancy that Mr. Tennyson's Arthurian epic is not 
exactly, in all respects, what he once meant to 
make it ; but it is fully an epic, vindicating the 
capacity of the age for that high style of com- 
position, made out of the proper epical material, 
that is to say, the mythology, the pre-literary 
traditions, and the first literature of the poet's 
own country, with much the noblest of all 
epic heroes, and a marvellously picturesque 
group of subordinate characters. It can but 
enhance our admiration of his work, to ascer- 
tain just how much of this impressive story the 
poet found ready to his hand in the ancient 
metrical and prose romances of England and 
France, especially in the two English author- 
ities which he distinguishes in his final dedica- 
tion, and how much we owe to his own inventive 
genius and exquisite skill in composition. This, 
in brief, is the argument of the complete poem. 

Arthur, believed of men to be the child of 
King Uther Pendragon and Ygerne, or Igerna, 
the Queen of Cornwall, was set on the throne 



236 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

of Britain by the might of the great magician 
Merlin. For then the Romans no longer ruled 
in the island, but it was rent by factions and 
laid waste by heathen hordes from over the 
seas. And Arthur was, in truth, not Uther's 
sou. but east up, a babe, out of the stormy sea, 
being sent by Heaven to appease the land and 
establish the faith of Christ therein; and he 
was delivered to Merlin to be brought up. And 
Merlin sang of him at his coming, "From the 
at deep to the great deep he goes." Arthur 
founded a new order of knighthood, called that 
of the Round Table; and his knights he made 
swear to uphold the faith of Christ, and right 
all wrongs of men ; and, above all, themselves 
to live chaste lives, each with the one woman of 
his sacred choice. Of the knights whom Arthur 
made, the first in time was Sir Bedivere; but 
the first in prowess, and his own dearest friend 
and brother-in-arms, was the famed Sir Laun- 
celot of the Lake. Him Arthur sent to fetch 
his betrothed bride, Guinevere, out of the land 
of Cameliard, for she was a princess of that prov- 
ince, and the fairest woman upon earth. After 
Sir Launcelot, Arthur's greatest knights were 



THE ARTHURIAD. 237 

Sir Tristram of Lyoness, Sir Gawain, Sir Gareth, 
and Sir Modred, sons of Arthur's reputed sister, 
the Queen of Orkney, and true grandsons of 
Uther Pendragon ; Sir Kay, his foster-brother; 
Greraint, a tributary prince ; Sir Pelleas of the 
Isles ; Sir Galahad ; and Sir Pereivale. All these 
kept their vows for a time, and lived purely ; 
and the heathen were overthrown in twelve 
great battles, and the land was at peace. And 
Merlin, of his deep wisdom, showed Arthur 
how to rule, and made the cities of the realm 
beautiful by his magic arts, and built for the 
king, on a hill in the ancient city of Camelot, 
the most glorious palace under the sun. But 
first the great Sir Launcelot, who had loved 
Queen Guinevere from the time when he 
brought her to her wedding, broke his vows, 
and sinned with her ; and Arthur knew it not ; 
nor, being himself incorruptible, so much as 
dreamed of this treachery for many years. 
Howbeit, others knew, and this sin became the 
occasion and excuse for many more. For then 
Sir Tristram of Lyoness loved guiltily Isolt the 
Fair, the wife of King Mark of Cornwall, and 
she returned his love ; and, in the end, Mark 



238 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

slew Tristram, not in open fight, but treacher- 
ously, having tracked him to his lady's bower. 
Next, Merlin the Wise was himself beguiled by 
a fair and wicked woman, — some say a sprite, — 
who robbed him of his mighty wit, and allured 
him into some strange prison, so that he was 
lost to Arthur, and no man saw him more. And 
Prince Gerainl withdrew from Arthur's court, 
because he had heard the scandal against Queen 
Guinevere, and would not that his own true 
wife should be beloved by her. And Sir Pelleas 
of the Isles, being young and himself spotless, 
loved a lady who deceived him, and was false 
with Sir Gawain, the reputed nephew of Arthur, 
which when Sir Pelleas knew, he went mad for 
grief and shame. And Sir Galahad and Sir Per- 
civale, who were also pure knights, grieved by 
the growing baseness of the time, vowed them- 
selves to the quest of the Holy Grail, or cup of 
the Last Supper; in the hope that if the sacred 
vessel were brought back among men, their 
hearts might become clean once more, and the 
work of the Lord and of the righteous king be 
revived. And Galahad found the grail, indeed, 
but was himself immediately caught away to 



THE ARTHURIAD. 239 

heaven, and the holy vessel with him ; but Per- 
civale went into a monastery, and took vows. 
There were man}* other knights also, who, fol- 
lowing these, undertook the quest of the Holy 
Grail, but idly, and from motives of vanity ; 
and, not being themselves pure, they could 
achieve nothing : but some perished on their 
adventures, and many went far astray, and re- 
turned no more : so that the might of the Round 
Table was broken, and the heathen were no longer 
held at bay. Erelong, the treason of Launcelot 
was discovered to the king, and the queen fled, 
and found sanctuary with the nuns in the con- 
vent of Almesbury ; and Launcelot himself with- 
drew to his own realm over-seas, whither Arthur 
pursued, and where he besieged him ; albeit, 
Launcelot would not lift his hand against the 
king who had made him knight. Finally, while 
Arthur was yet away, Modrecl revolted and 
seized the crown ; and Arthur, returning, met 
Modred and his forces in Lyoness ; and there 
w r as fought a great battle, in which an hundred 
thousand men were slain, and nearly all the 
remnant of the Round Table perished. Last 
of all, Arthur slew Modred in a single contest, 



240 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

and was himself wounded unto death; but certain 
queens removed him, by ship, from the battle- 
field, promising to cure Ids wounds in the mystic 
island of Avallon. Howbeit, lie returned no 
more ; and the prophecy was fulfilled, — " From 
the great deep to the greal deep he goes." 

Now it can hardly he necessary to say that 
for this mystical and moving tale there is hardly 
the faintest foundation in veracious history. 
We may cherish in our secret hearts, but we 
would blush to have discovered, tin* wild hope 
that Dr. Schliemann may yet drain some Welsh 
lake and lay bare Excalibur, or unearth the 
sculptured gates of sacred Camelot. What 

students of early mediaeval literature do know 
for certain, and a gracious point of support they 
find it, is, that the Normans marched to victory 
at the battle of Hastings to the unimaginable 
tune of the " Chanson de Roland," as chanted by 
one Taillefer, who fell gallantly in the forefront 
of the invaders, with that rude strain upon his 
lips. But once planted and at peace in those 
ill-gotten new homes, — the remote inheritance 
of which is so particularly glorious, — the Nor- 
man gentry must have had but a dreary time of 



THE ARTHURIAD. 241 

it ; and they early learned to vary the monotony 
of their' indoor entertainments by inviting the 
performances of the bards and wandering glee- 
men of the conquered land. Brutus, Lear, 
Merlin, Arthur, Tristram, Gawain, — these 
were the heroes whom those gleemen sang, and 
their names, however barbarous to Norman ears, 
were new, or at least had been but rarely and 
faintly heard before in the echoes of Armorican 
song, and their exploits made an exhilarating 
variety after the hackneyed tales of the Moorish 
wars and the monstrous rhymed biographies of 
Grecian heroes and early saints. We conclude, 
at all events, that this British lore had come 
fully into fashion eighty years after the Con- 
quest : for then, in 1147, the enterprising monk 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, himself a Norman, dedi- 
cated to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, his " Historia 
Britonum," triumphantly announced as a Latin 
translation out of a " precious treasure " of early 
manuscript written on parchment, in the ancient 
British tongue, and brought to light with exul- 
tation by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, in a 
convent in Armorica. If such a manuscript ever 
existed, it was likely enough to have been found 

16 



242 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

in Armorica, that early civilized and Christian- 
ized province, to which so many Britons fled 
for refuge during the era of the Saxon invasions 
that it came in time itself to be called Brittany. 
But whether or no the Walter who discovered 
it were Walter Mapes the poet, alias Calenius, a 
famous enthusiast in Celtic story, and himself 
the reputed author of sundry French Arthurian 
romances of the twelfth century, must depend 
unhappily, on the date of Calenius'fl birth, which 
some of the authorities place later by a few 
years than the appearance of Geoffrey's book. 
And ii is certainly remarkable that so complete 
a work in prose should have been composed in 
any other tongue than monkish Latin, before 
the adoption by the Xormans of the British 
legendary lore, and the date of the first prose 
romances. Moreover, there is, so to speak, an 
absurd consistency, an incredible richness and 
roundness about Geoffrey's tale, which convince 
us that at least his Armorican material suffered 
nothing by its passage through his hands. Cu- 
rious it is to learn from his conscientious chro- 
nology that Brutus, the grandson of JEneas, 
emigrated to Britain at the time when Eli 



THE ARTHURIAD. 243 

governed Israel and the ark of the Lord was 
taken by the Philistines ; that Lear divided his 
kingdom among his ingrate daughters in the 
days of Elijah ; and that Christ was born in 
Bethlehem during the reign of Cymbeline. But 
our present concern is with Geoffrey's Arthur 
only, — a splendid figure, the clearly defined and 
obvious prototype of him who continued to 
shine without a peer in Norman song and story 
for more than three hundred years. Not until 
1485 did Sir Thomas Malory sum up the growth 
of legend concerning the king and his knights 
in his " Morte d' Arthur," the latest and finest of 
the great chivalric romances, whose artless and 
beautiful phraseology Tennyson himself has not 
always cared to alter. 

The following is the story of Arthur's birth 
as it is told by Geoffrey, afterwards with more 
fulness of detail by the French romancers, and, 
finally, with that added grace of characteriz- 
ation which was far beyond Geoffrey's range, 
by Malory. 

Kino* Uther Pendragon was enamoured of 
Igerna, the wife of Gorlois, King of Cornwall ; 
on which account Gorlois shut her up in the 



244 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

strong castle of Tintagil, but himself withdrew 
to another castle, — "hight Terrabil," says Sir 
Thomas Malory, — where Utlier besieged, con- 
quered, and slew him. The king, by the assist- 
ance of the magician Merlin, then assumed the 
appearance of Gorlois and hastened to Tintagil, 
where [gerna gave him a wife's welcome. Im- 
mediately he dropped his disguise, informed her 
of her husband's death, and compelled her to 
wed him. Their child was Arthur. 

In this narrative the only supernatural ele- 
ment is the transformation of Gorlois by Merlin ; 
and Merlin. Geoffrey candidly allows, was not 
canny. He was, by all accounts, the child of a 
mortal maiden and a spirit descended from one 
of the angels who fell with Lucifer, and bearing 
a general resemblance to the Da)mon of Soc- 
rates ; not a common mode of origin, certainly, 
but one of which, the historian assures us, 
divers instances were known. 1 The beautiful 
fancy of a dragon-shaped vessel, "bright with 
a shining people on its decks," which appeared 

1 For a monstrous amplification of this bit of " history," 
with the addition of all manner of unpleasant details, see 
abstract of the English metrical romance of Merlin, in Ellis's 
" Specimens of Early English Romances." 



THE ARTHURIAD. 245 

off Tintagil on the night of Uther's death with- 
out issue, and of the naked babe " descending 
in the glory of the seas" to the beach at Mer- 
lin's feet, is Tennyson's own. He made it, as 
a poet abundantly maj', to correspond with the 
really ancient and tenacious fable that Arthur, 
when his lifework was ruined and his kingdom 
rent, passed to a sleep of ages in the isle of 
Avallon, but did not die. On the whole, it is 
worth, for purposes of art, the sacrifice of the 
rather touching scene in Malory, where Igerna 
is roughly accused of treasonably protracting 
the quarrels over the succession, by concealing 
the circumstances of Arthur's birth : " Then 
spake Igraine and said, ' I am a woman, and I 
may not fight. . . . But Merlin knoweth well 
how King Uther came to me in the castle of 
Tintagil, in the likeness of my lord that was 
dead three hours tofore. And after Uther 
wedded me ; and, by his commandment, when 
the child was born it was delivered to Merlin 
and nourished by him ; and so I saw the child 
never after, nor wot what is his name, for I 
knew him never yet.' And there Ulfius said to 
the queen, ' Merlin is more to blame than ye.' 



2-46 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

4 Well I wot,' said the queen, c that I bare a 
child by my lord, King Uther ; but I wot not 
where he is become.' Then Merlin took King 
Arthur by the hand, saying, c This is your 
mother.' And therewith King Arthur took 
his mother, Queen Igraine, in his arms and 
d her, and either wept upon other." 
The account of Arthur's progressive subjuga- 
tion of native factions and heathen invaders, in 
the twelve: -i\-at battles which Xennius had 
enumerated as early as the fifth century, 1 is that 

1 '■ Then it was that tin- rnagnanimoui Arthur, with all the 
kin'js and military force of Britain, fought against the Saxons. 
And though there were many more noble than himself, yet he 
twelve times chosen their commander, and was as often 
conqueror. The first battle in which he was engaged iras at 
the mouth of the river (ileni. The second, third, fourth, and 
fifth were on another river, by the Britons called Duglas, in 
the region Limiis ; the sixth, on the river Bassas. The seventh 
in the wood Celidon, which the Britons call Cat (.'(jit Celidon. 
The eighth was near Gurnion Castle, where Arthur bore the 
image of the Holy Virgin, Mother of God, on his shoulders, and 
through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Mary- 
put the Saxons to flight and pursued them the whole day with 
great slaughter. The ninth was at the city of Legion, which 
is called Cair Lion. The tenth was on the banks of the river 
Trat Treuroit. The eleventh was on the mountain Brenguorn, 
which we call Cat Bregion. The twelfth was a most severe 
contest, when Arthur penetrated to the Hill of Badon. . . . 
For no strength can avail against the will of the Almighty." 
(Nennius, "History of the Britons/' a. d. 452.) 



THE ARTHURIAD. 247 

which, in Tennyson, first fires our imagination 
and enlists our sympathy for the king, In both 
Geoffrey and Malory this pacification of the 
realm is dwarfed by comparison with the pom- 
pous details of Arthur's Roman war, of victories 
over the Emperor Lucius Tiberius, a court held 
at Paris, and a coronation at Rome. All such 
chimeras the laureate's fine sense of symmetry 
compelled him to dismiss in a single passage : 

" There at the banquet those great lords from Eome, 
The slowly fading mistress of the world, 
Strode in and claimed their tribute as of yore. 
But Arthur spake, ' Behold, for these have sworn 
To wage my wars and worship me their king, 
The old order changeth, yielding place to new; 
And we that fight for our fair father Christ, 
Seeing that ye be grown too weak and old 
To drive the heathen from your Koman wall, 
Xo tribute will we pay : ' so those great lords 
Drew back in wrath, and Arthur strove with Rome." 

Indeed, a sovereign so enamoured of foreign 
conquest as Geoffrey's Arthur could hardly 
claim our sympathy for the ignominious but 
not very unnatural catastrophe of his reign, 
which the monk records in these few dry 
words : — 



2-18 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

" As he was beginning to pass the Alps, he 
had news brought him that his nephew Mod red, 
to whose care he had entrusted Britain, had, by 
tyrannical and treasonable practices, set the 
crown upon his own head, and that Queen Guan- 
humara, in violation of her first marriage, had 
treasonably married him" (!) This is actually 
the only time that the gracious Guinevere is 
mentioned by name in Geoffrey's history, al- 
though she is alluded to in his thirteenth chap- 
ter, where he gives a description of the king's 
COronation-feast, far more stately than Malory's 
transcript from the French, and a worthier 
preliminary to Tennyson's noble picture of the 
royal wedding. To this last is added, in the 
recent edition, a passage full of splendor : — 

11 Far shone the fields of May through open door, 
The Bacred altar blossomed white with May, 
The sun of May descended on their king, 
They gazed on all earth's beauty in their queen, 
Rolled incense, and there passed along the hymns 
A voice, as of the waters, while the two 
Sware at the shrine of Christ a deathless love: 
And Arthur said, ' Behold, thy doom is mine: 
Let chance what will, I love thee to the death! ■ 
To whom the queen replied with drooping eyes, 



THE ARTHURIAD. 249 

1 King and my lord, I love thee to the death! ' 
And holy Dubric spread his hands and spake, 
' Reign ye, and live and love, and make the world 
Other, and may thy queen be one with thee, 
And all this order of thy Table Round 
Fulfil the boundless purpose of their king! ' " 

Nor must we omit here to notice — for this 
also is new — the strange paean sung by Arthur's 
victorious knights as they march in the bridal 
procession, to the sound of trumpets, through 
a city " all on fire with sun and cloth of gold ; " 
more especially the refrain, " Fall battle-axe and 
flash brand," where the movement of the verse 
expresses so curiously the descent of the heavy- 
headed primitive weapon. 

In a passage which is indirectly of unusual 
interest, as reflecting the Norman ideal of chiv- 
alry in the twelfth century, Geoffrey says that 
in the reign of Arthur, " Britain had arrived at 
such a pitch of grandeur that in abundance of 
riches, luxury of ornaments, and politeness of 
inhabitants, it far surpassed all other kingdoms. 
The knights in it, that were famous for chivalry, 
wore their clothes and arms all of the same color 
and fashion ; and the women also, no less cele- 



250 TROUBADOURS AXD TROUVERES. 

bratecl for their wit, wore all the same kind of 
apparel, and counted none worth)' of their love 
but such as had given proof of their valor in 
three successive battles. Thus was the valor 
of the men an encouragement for the women's 
chastity, and the love of the women a spur to 
soldiers' bravery," 

And this is the sum of what the monk of 
Monmouth contributes to the epic of Arthur, if 
we except the matter-of-fact statement to the 
effect that after Arthur was mortally wounded 
lie had himself conveyed to the island of Aval- 
Ion. — where, by the way. was situated the 
Castle Perillous in which Lynette, or Linet, 
wrought so many cures, — in the hope that he 
might there be healed. 

There is no allusion in Geoffrey's chronicle to 
the mysterious manner of Merlin's taking-off, 
although great stress is laid on his weight in 
Arthur's councils ; and his famous prophecy, 
which the monk had previously translated from 
an independent source, is incorporated with the 
;i Historia Britonum " entire. Even the compar- 
atively late English metrical romance of Merlin, 
although ten thousand lines long, is unfinished, 



THE ARTHURIAD. 251 

and breaks off in the midst of the war in which 
Arthur engaged on behalf of Leodogran, the 
father of Guinevere. But there is little doubt 
that the stoiy of the great magician's dishonor- 
able death is of French origin, as the name of 
his enchantress, whether Vivien or Niume, is 
undoubtedly French. In Malory, Merlin is 
made to foreshadow his own sombre end, at the 
same time that he foretells to Arthur the ruin 
of the kingdom through his marriage with Guin- 
evere. 

" c Ah,' said King Arthur, ' ye are a marvel- 
lous man, but I marvel much at thy words that 
I must die in battle.' 'Marvel not,' said Merlin, 
fc for it is God's will. . . . But I may well be 
sorry,' said Merlin, c for I shall die a shameful 
death, — to be put in the earth quick, — and ye 
shall die a worshipful death.' . . . So after these 
quests, it fell so that Merlin fell in dotage on 
one of the damsels of the lake. But Merlin 
would let her have no rest. . . . And ever she 
made Merlin good cheer till she learned of him 
all manner thing that she desired, and he was 
asotted upon her that he might not be from her. 
So on a time Merlin told Arthur that he should 



252 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

not dure long, but for all his crafts he should be 
put in the earth quick ; and so he told the king 
many things that should befall, but always he 
warned the king to keep well his sword and the 
scabbard, for he told him how the sword and 
the scabbard should be stolen from him by a 
woman whom lie trusted. Also he told King 
Arthur that he should miss him ; ' Yet had ye 
lever than all your lands to have me again.' 
'All,' said the king, 'since ye know of your 
adventure, purvey for it, and put away by your 
crafts that misadventure. 9 ' Nay,' said Merlin, 
1 it will not be.' So then he departed from the 
king. And within a while the damsel of the 
lake departed, and Merlin went with her, ever- 
more, wheresoever she went. And often Mer- 
lin would have had her privily away by his sub- 
tle crafts. Then she made him swear that he 
should never do none enchantment upon her, 
if he would have his will. And so he sware. 
So she and Merlin went over the seas. . . . 
And always Merlin lay about the lady to have 
her love, and she was ever passing weary of 
him, and fain would have been delivered of 
him, for she was afeard of him, because he was 



THE ARTHURIAD. 253 

a devil's son and she could not put him away 
by no means. And so it happed on a time 
that Merlin showed to her in a rock which was 
a great wonder, and wrought by enchantment, 
that went under a great stone. So by her 
subtle working she made Merlin to go under 
that stone, to let her wit of the marvels there ; 
but she wrought so there for him that he came 
never out for all the marvels he could do." 

It will be seen that Malory has not distributed 
the balance of censure, so to speak, for the wiz- 
ard's unhappy end precisely as Tennyson does. 
But the passage is quoted entire, because it 
illustrates better and more briefly than almost 
any other the miraculous development which 
Tennyson sometimes gives his material. The 
breathless interest and appalling beauty of the 
story of " Merlin and Vivien," as we have it in 
the " Idyls," the sublime fitness of the scenery, 
the subtle analysis of instinct and motive, and, 
above all, the irresistible force and solemnity of 
the lesson conveyed, — they are all here in em- 
bryo, in this dreamy fragment of a garrulous old 
tale. But the power which can evolve the one 
out of the other seems, to us, like the power 



25-4 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

which causes the seed to grow. " What thou 
so west, thou so west not that body which shall 
be, but bare grain ; it may chance of wheat or 
of some other grain.'' This is indeed the maker s 
proper function among men ; but here we see it 
almost in its highest exercise. Sir Thomas 
Malory himself must lane 1 possessed no small 
share of this vivifying and organizing power, 
or lie never COUld have wrought, as he assuredly 

lias, the heterogeneous materials which he col- 
lected from so many sources, into a n<t'iue, con- 

ent, and affecting whole. Hut usually, except 
in one remarkable instance to be noticed hereaf- 
ter. Tennyson's mode of treatment is as great an 
advance in art and in refinement on Malory's, 

Malory's is on the crudeness and puerility of 
Wace, or the lusty coarseness of Thomas the 
Rhymer of Ercildoune. 

The story of " Geraint and Enid" is more 
purely episodical than any other idyl, and is 
derived from an entirely independent source. 
The story of " Gareth and Lynette," as we 
have it in Tennyson, belongs wholly to the 
earlier and happier period of Arthur's reign. 
Its events bear a general resemblance to those 



THE ART HUM AD. 255 

which are recounted, in this instance, very much 
more at length, in Malory ; and the marked 
peculiarities of Lynette — her rudeness and pet- 
ulance, and entire lack of the softer graces which 
belonged, as a rule, to the lady of chivalry — 
are fully indicated in the old story. In fact, 
Lynette, or Linet, is called in Malory, the " dam- 
sel savage;" although considerable stress is laid 
on her skill in the arts of healing, which she prac- 
tised on many a wounded knight besides Gareth, 
in the Castle Perillous of her beautiful sister, 
Lyonors. There is a very life-like scene in 
Malory, where the mother of Gareth, Queen 
Belicent, alarmed at his protracted absence on 
his. first adventure, appears at Arthur's court, 
and reproaches the king for the lad's non-appear- 
ance, with the true unreasoning fierceness of 
feminine anxiety. There is also a particularly 
pretty scene at court, where Gareth and Lyonors 
finally meet, and both confess to Arthur their 
love for one another. 

" And among all those ladies, she [Lyonors] 
was named the fairest and peerless. Then, when 
Sir Gareth saw her, there was manj" a goodly 
look and goodly words, that all men of worship 



256 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

had joy to behold them. Then came King Ar- 
thur and many other kings, and Dame Guinevere 
and the Queen of Orkney, and there the king 
asked Ins nephew, Sir Gareth, whether he 
would have that lady to his wife? ' My lord, 
wit you well that I love her above all ladies 
living. 1 'Now, fair lady/ said King Arthur, 
4 what say ye?' ' Mosl noble king/ said Dame 
Liones, * wit you well that my lord, Sir Gareth, 
is to me more lever to have and hold as my hus- 
band than any king or prince : and if I may not 
have him, I promise you I will never have none. 
For, my Lord Arthur, he is my first love, and he 
shall be my last.' " Malory, it will he observed, 
is that " earlier M author who says, " that Gareth 
married Lady Lyonors;" and a stately wedding 
is described ; while Arthur is represented as 
taking rather an active part in bringing about 
the marriage of Lynette to Sir Gaheris, a com- 
paratively obscure brother of Gareth, Modred, 
and Gawain, but still a very suitable parti for 
that spirited damsel. Malory's Gareth continues 
to figure with distinction throughout Arthur's 
reign, and is closely involved in its catastrophe. 
He was slain by Launcelot's own hand " un- 



THE ARTHURIAD. 257 

wittingly," amid the bloodshed which followed 
the discovery by Modred of the great knight's 
treason : thus causing Gawain, who, up to this 
time, quite consistently with his character in 
Malory, had been inclined to screen the dis- 
tinguished lovers from Arthur's wrath, to swear 
an oath of mortal vengeance against Launcelot, 
in performing which he was himself slain. 

Tennyson's Gawain is identical with the Ga- 
wain of Malory, and hardly more elaborated : a 
brave, unprincipled man, adorned with all chival- 
ric accomplishments, but of a vindictive temper, 
as unlike as possible to the proud and patient 
magnanimity of Arthur, Launcelot, and his own 
young brother, Gareth. " For," says Malory, 
" after Sir Gareth had espied Sir Gawain's con- 
ditions, he withdrew himself from his brother 
Sir Gawain's fellowship, for he w r as vengeable, 
and, where he hated, he would be avenged with 
murder, and that hated Sir Gareth." 

Gawain, though a frequent, is seldom a prin- 
cipal, actor in the great scene of Arthur's life, 
and the sad story of " Pelleas and Ettarre," 
in which he figures most conspicuously, is but 
the briefest of episodes in Malory; illustrating, 

17 



258 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

hardly less remarkably than the story of " Mer- 
lin and Vivien," Tennyson's magnificent power 
of amplification. It is proper, however, to ob- 
serve, that the Gawain of all elder romance is 
a very different person from Malory's, — much 
more admirable and commonplace. His chival- 
ric rank is second only to that of Launcelot and 
Tristram. lie is the hero of many an honorable 
adventure, and is confidently identified with the 
golden-tongued Gwalzmai of the Welsh triads, 
as Tristram is identified with Tristan the Tu- 
multuous, the son of Tallwyz. 

Let us now consider briefly Tennyson's treat- 
ment of the world-renowned story of "Tristram 
and rsolt/' The high antiquity of this tale, 
its peculiar picturesqueness, and the prominent 
place which it occupies in the Arthurian cycle of 
romances, including Malory's, of which it con- 
stitutes at least a quarter part, would have led 
us to expect that the laureate would give it 
more space than he has done in the dreary 
fragment of " The Last Tournament." That 
singular poem, as it first appeared indepen- 
dently, did certainly seem to deserve much of 
the severe criticism which it received for ob- 



THE ART HUM AD. 259 

scurity of style, repulsive details, and inconse- 
quent action. It can hardly be re-read, in its 
proper connection, without receiving a tribute 
of admiration. The last ray of sunshine swal- 
lowed up in storm, the last gleam of honorable 
courtesy vanishing in a cynical and lazy liber- 
tinism, the last flaming up of passion quenched 
by a stealthy revenge, — these things, and the 
dun, sallow tints of latest autumn in which 
they are all represented, give " The Last Tour- 
nament " a marvellous fitness for its place in the 
thick-coming shadows of an imminent tragedy. 
And yet every verse of the poem presupposes, 
on the part of the reader, a previous knowledge 
of the story of " Tristram and Isolt," which 
most readers doubtless possess, but which the 
poet had, artistically speaking, no right to as- 
sume. And we cannot rid ourselves of the fancy 
that he once meant to have told it in full in a 
separate and earlier idyl. The epic, even in its 
latest form, falls short by two books of the 
canonical number. We infer, from the intro- 
duction to the fine fragment which first appeared 
a generation ago, under the title of u Morte 
d' Arthur," and has since been expanded into the 



260 TROUBADOURS AND TROUYERES. 

" Passing of Arthur," that this, in the poet's 
original scheme, was to have been the eleventh 
book of the epic. It seems impossible but that 
the earlier missing canto was to have rehearsed 
all of the romantic story, except its grim catas- 
trophe, of those lovers who are so constantly 
compared with Launcelot and Guinevere in all 
old romance, nay, even poetically styled the 
only two in the world beside them. AVhy was 
this classic talc rejected? Was it because the 
poet deemed it too hackneyed, or because of its 
Titter impracticability lor that strenuous moral 
purpose which came so palpably to modify his 
treatment of the Arthurian story, and which 
must have deepened so fast between the purely 
aesthetic days of the " Morte d* Arthur," and those 
of the supreme idyl of*- Guinevere " ? Sir Walter 
Scott, in the fascinating preface to his edition of 
Thomas the Rhymer's u Tristram," speaks of the 
" extreme ingratitude and profligacy of the 
hero." In Malory, and apparently in the later 
French prose-romance which he closely fol- 
lowed, these ugly qualities are veiled by every 
lesser chivalric grace, by consummate skill in 
music and the arts of the chase, and by an 



TEE ARTHURIAD. 261 

almost fantastic magnanimity in combat. But 
the character is essentially the same. Tristram 
is the most notorious and the most elegant of 
libertines ; and the full knowledge and open 
toleration of his intrigues on the part of Arthur 
himself, as compared with his noble incredulity 
and righteous wrath when he was himself 
wronged, constitute the most glaring inconsist- 
ency in Malory's romance, and the greatest 
blemish on the character of his king. In Mal- 
ory, indeed, the denouement of the story, which 
is the same as that recorded in " The Last Tour- 
nament," is retributive, and so may be considered 
in a general way moral. There is another and 
much more commonly received ending, which 
may be called the sentimental, to distinguish it 
from the other. In this, Tristram, after desert- 
ing his wife, Isolt of the White Hands, and 
dallying a while with his former paramour, Isolt 
the wife of King Mark, returns again to Brit- 
tany, and receives in battle a wound from a 
poisoned spear, which even the skill of his in- 
jured wife is powerless to cure. The sick man 
takes a fancy that Isolt the queen could cure 
him, and sends his faithful squire, Gouvernail, 



262 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

to beg her to come and save his life. His 
weakness warns him that the least delay will 
be fatal, and accordingly he orders Gouvernail 
on his return to the Breton coast to hoist white 
sails if he shall have prevailed on the queen to 
accompany him ; black, if she shall have refused. 
Isolt the wife overhears the charge, and heart- 
sick awaits the return of the vessel: when its 
approach is announced, and Tristram gasps out 
a question as to the color of the sails, she tells 
him a lie, says black, and he dies. And when 
Tsolt the queen arrives, amid the universal 
lamentation over Tristram, she refuses to sur- 
vive him. 

It would be interesting to know whether the 
moral or the sentimental ending of the story is 
the elder. Sir Walter Scott assumes the latter, 
but does not give his reasons for so doing; and 
there seems at least a possibility that the moral 
ending may also be of great antiquity. Thomas 
of Ercildoune wrote his metrical romance of " Sir 
Tristram" somewhere about the middle of the 
thirteenth century. Sir Walter, in the preface 
and notes to his edition of this ancient English 
poem, has illustrated it with all the wealth of 



THE ARTHURIAD. 263 

his curious antiquarian lore, and argues with 
much ardor for the Celtic origin and character 
of the story. He admits, however, that Marie's 
" Lay of the Honeysuckle," which relates one of 
its incidents, and two French metrical fragments 
which correspond much more closely with the 
Rhymer's version than the later romances, are 
earlier than his ; and the best modern French 
criticism places them nearly a century earlier. 
Now the Rhymer's "Tristram" is incomplete. 
Not only are the illuminations which surmounted 
the original black-letter cut away from every 
page, but the last half of the last fytte or canto 
is gone entirely ; and it is Scott who supplies 
the defect by adding the usual sentimental end- 
ing of the story in an exquisite imitation of 
Thomas's own quaint verse, hardly to be distin- 
guished from it in st}<le, and much more tender 
and delicate in spirit. But it is singular that 
in one of the old French metrical fragments, 
whose place is near the end of the story, there 
is a passage which Sir Walter Scott himself 
quotes in his preface, for its bearing on another 
question, where the author, after saying that 
the tale was even then told in a great many 



264 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

different ways, proceeds to argue that it is 
absurd to suppose that Gouvernail could ever 
have gone to Cornwall and taken away Queen 
Isolt. 1 How this author eventually disposed of 
the difficulty, we shall probably never know ; 
but we may safely conclude that it was not 
exactly in the sentimental fashion. Here is a 
curious point for future researches. 

We have now glanced at the originals of 
nearly all the great Arthurian heroes whom 
Tennyson lias restored, except the two who" 
move ns most deeply, — Launcelot the Peerless, 
and Galahad the Spotless. To these immor- 

* " Cist fust par tut la part con<;us 
E par tut le regne biub, 
Qui de L'amtU ert parjurers, 
Kt enuera Ysolt messagers. 

Li reis l'en haiet mult torment ; 
Guaiter le feseil a m gent ; 

E cument put-il dune venir 

Sun service a la caert offrir," etc. 

" He [Gouvernail] was known in all those parts 
And throughout the kingdom 

As being privy to the love of [Tristram and Isolt], 
And often sent with messages to Isolt. 
The king hated him for it profoundly, 
And had him watched by his people ; 
How, then, could he come 
To offer his service at the court," etc. 



THE ARTHURIAD. 265 

tal figures we must allow a purely French 
origin. 1 In Malory, and in the French prose 
romances of" Launcelot du Lac " and the " Saint 
Grael," they are father and son. In the refined 
version of Tennyson it would hardly have been 
possible to admit this relation, yet it adds a 
peculiar interest and pathos to some of the 
scenes in that quest of the Holy Grail in which 
from motives so dissimilar they both engaged. 
For example, Malory tells us how once, during 
that fateful year of the quest, they met on board 
the ship which was conveying to their last rest 

1 Yet G. S. Stuart Glennie, in his fascinating " Essay on 
the Arthurian Localities " prefixed to the republication by the 
Early English Test Society of the incomplete " Romance of 
Merlin," quotes M. De La Villemarque as pleading for the Scot- 
tish origin of Launcelot himself : — " Les plus anciens manuscrits 
portent souvent Ancelot. . . . ancel, en langue romane signifie 
servant, et ancelot est son diminutif. Si, par hasard, Ancelot 
etait la traduction du nom d'un personnage gallois, dont l'his- 
toire s'accorderait en tout point avec le roman. Eh bien, c'est 
ce que je crois avoir decouvert. On trouve, en effet, dans les 
traditions celtiques un chef dont le nom Mael (serviteur) repond 
exactement a celui d' Ancelot et a qui les anciens bardes, les 
triades, les chroniques, les legendes, et toutes les autorites 
armoricaines, galloises, ou etrangeres pretent les memes traits, 
le merae caractere, les memes moeurs, les memes aventures, 
qu'au heros du roman francais." " And if," adds Mr. Stuart 
Glennie, " we accept this identification, then Launcelot as 
well as Mordred belongs to Scotland." 



266 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

the remains of Percivale's holy sister. It was 
just before Sir Launcelot had the veiled vision 
which taught him that his own quest was vain, 
in an interval of his so-called madness, when he 
was enjoying a great but transitory peace of 
mind. 

" * Ah,' said Sir Launcelot, l are ye Gala- 
had ? ' 'Yea, forsooth,' said he. And so he 
kneeled down and asked him his blessing, and 
after took off his helm and kissed him. And 
there was great joy between them, for there is 
no tongue can tell the joy that they made either 
of other, and many a friendly word spoken be- 
tween as kind would, the which is no need here 
to be rehearsed. And there every each told other 
of their adventures and marvels that were be- 
fallen to them in many journeys sith that they 
departed from the court. ... So dwelled Laun- 
celot and Galahad within that ship half a year, 
and served God daily and nightly with all their 
power. . . . Then came to the ship a knight 
armed all in white, and saluted the two knights 
on the high Lord's behalf, and said, ' Galahad, 
sir, ye have been long enough with your father ; 
come out of the ship and go where the adven- 



THE ARTHURIAD. 267 

tures shall lead thee in quest of the Sancgreal.' 
Then he went to his father and kissed him 
sweetly, and said, ' Fair, sweet father, I wot 
not when I shall see you more till I see the 
body of Jesu Christ.' ' I pray you,' said Laun- 
celot, ' pray ye to the high Father that He hold 
me in his service.' And so he took his horse, 
and there they heard a voice that said, ' Think 
to do well, for the one shall never see the other 
before the dreadful day of doom.' 'Now, son 
Galahad,' said Launcelot, ; since we shall de- 
part, and never see other, I pray to the high 
Father to preserve both me and you both.' 
' Sir,' said Galahad, ; no prayer availeth so much 
as )^ours ! ' " 

Galahad's death occurred shortly after, and 
Launcelot was never again at ease in his sin. 
The mighty struggles of this great and tender 
soul with the guilt that was crushing it are 
plainly foreshadowed in Malory ; but of course 
they do not receive any thing like the searching 
examination with which he is made in Temry- 
son to face his own " remorseful pain " at the 
close of the thrilling episode of Elaine of Asto- 
lat ; although otherwise, in this episode, Tenny- 



268 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

son follows Malory with unusual closeness. The 
cruel reaction of Launcelot's divided loyalties, 
the deep ik dishonor in which his heart's honor 
was really rooted," are set in stronger light than 
ever in Tennyson's last edition in two interpo- 
lated passages of suck unusual beauty and signifi- 
cance that we make room for them, — our last 
quotations from the ** Idyls " here. The first oc- 
curs on the threshold of the story, before Launce- 
lot had sought and brought Guinevere to be 
Arthur's wife, — which, I)}' the way, in Malory, 
lie does not do, — when Arthur had finally 
broken the might of the last insurgent army: — 

lt Then, before a voice 
As dreadful as the Bhout of one who sees 
To one who sins, and deems himself alone 
And all the world asleep, they swerved and brake, 
Flying; and Arthur called to stay the brands 
That hacked among the flyers. ' Ho! They yield ! * 
So, like a painted battle, the war stood 
Silenced, the living quiet as the dead; 
And in the heart of Arthur joy was lord. 
He laughed upon his warrior whom he loved 
And honored most : ' Thou dost not doubt me king, 
So well thine arm hath wrought for me to-day.' 
1 Sir and my liege,' he cried, ' the fire of God 
Descends upon thee in the battle-field ; 



THE ARTHURIAD. 269 

I know thee for my king! ' Whereat, the two 
Sware, on the field of death, a deathless love. 
And Arthur said, i Man's word is God in man ; 
Let chance what will, I trust thee to the death.' " 

And the second is after the final parting of 
the king and Guinevere : — 

" On their march to westward, Bedivere, 
Who slowly paced among the slumbering host, 
Heard, in his tent, the moanings of the king: 
i I found Him in the shining of the stars, 
I marked him in the flowering of His fields, 
But in His ways with men I find him not. 
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die. 
Oh, me ! for why is all around us here 
As if some lesser god had made the world, 
But had not force to shape it as he would 
Till the High God behold it from beyond, 
And enter in and make it beautiful ? 
Or else, as if the world were wholly fair, 
But that these eyes of men are dense and dim, 
And have not power to see it as it is? 
Perchance, because we see not to the close: 
For I, being simple, thought to work His will, 
And have but stricken with the sword in vain, 
And all whereon I leaned, in wife and friend, 
Is traitor to my peace ; and all my realm 
Reels back into the beast and is no more. 
""My God, Thou hast forgotten me in my death! 
Nay, God, my Christ, I pass, but shall not die.' " 



270 TROUBADOURS AND TROU VERES. 

So the king goes away into the mist and 
darkness of that " last dim, weird battle in the 
west," — a marvellous picture in its wintry tints 
of white and monotonous gray, indelibly drawn 
on the memory of the present generation. And 
this, with Tennyson, is the end. But here, at 
last, we venture to think that the poet's art has 
overreached itself, and that his finale, line and 
imaginative though it be, is loss impressive 
than that of the simple old master. It seems 
impossible to read the "Idyls" in their con- 
nection, and to go directly from " Guinevere " 
to the " Passing of Arthur," — from the verity, 
solemnity, and intense humanity of the former, 
and the extraordinary moral elevatjon which it 
induces, to the mists and portents and fairy un- 
certainties of the latter, — without experiencing 
a painful shock and chill. The two poems, both 
so beautiful, belong to different spheres. There 
is a life-time, a spiritual revolution, between 
the two. Malory's story and that of his u French 
book" by no means end with the battle. Is it 
possible that the absent twelfth book of Ten- 
nyson's epic was to have related these subse- 
quent incidents? 



THE ARTHURIAD. 271 

At all events, Malory's ending is realistic and 
credible, — sad, but satisfying. On the morning 
after Sir Bedivere had seen, as in a dream, the 
king conveyed away, he came in a maze of grief 
and weariness to a chapel, where he heard of a 
hurried funeral which had taken place there the 
midnight before. Certain weeping ladies had 
brought to this humble hermitage a stately 
corpse, and prayed for its sepulture. "Alas," 
cried Sir Bedivere, " that was my Lord Arthur, 
and there he lies." And Sir Bedivere straight- 
way vowed to live always in that hermitage and 
pray for Arthur's soul. But when the tidings of 
Arthur's death had travelled over seas, Launce- 
lot arose in despair, and, returning to England, 
prayed for a last interview with Guinevere. It 
was granted, and they met in the cloister of her 
convent, and in the presence of her nuns. 

" Then she said to all her ladies, ' Through this 
man and me hath all this war been wrought, and 
the death of the most noblest knights of the 
world ; for through our love that we have loved 
together is my most noble lord slain. There- 
fore, Sir Launcelot, wit thou well, I am set in 
such a plight to get my soul's health ; and yet 



272 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

I trust, through God's grace, that after my death, 
to have a sight of the blessed face of Christ, and 
at doomsday to sit on His right side ; for as sin- 
ful as ever I was are saints in heaven. There- 
fore, Sir Launcelot, I require thee and beseech 
thee heartily, for all the love that ever was be- 
twixt us, that thou never see me more in the 
visage : and I command thee, on God's behalf, 
that thou forsake my company, and to thy king- 
dom thou turn again, and keep well- thy realm 
from war and wrack. For, ;is well as I have 
loved thee, my heart will not serve me to see 
thee: Tor through thee and me is the ilower 
of kings and knights destroyed. Therefore, Sir 
Launcelot, go to thine own realm, and there 
take thee a wife, and live with her witli joy and 
bliss: and I pray thee heartily, pray for me to 
our Lord that I may amend my misliving.' 
1 Now, sweet madam,' said Sir Launcelot, i would 
ye that I should return again to my country, and 
there wed a lady ? Nay, madam, wit you well 
that shall I never do ; for I shall never be so 
false to you of that I have promised: but the 
same destiny that ye have taken you to, I will 
take me unto, for to please Jesu ; and ever for 



THE ARTHURIAD. 273 

you I cast me specially to pray. ... I insure 
you faithfully, I will ever take me to penance, 
and pray while my life lasteth, if that I may find 
any hermit, either gray or white, that will receive 
me. Wherefore, madam, I pray you kiss me, 
and never no more.' 'Nay,' said the queen, 
4 that shall I never do ; but abstain you from 
such works.' And they departed. But there 
was never so hard an hearted man but he would 
have wept to see the dolor that they made." 

In all this there is a grave and simple fitness 
to the inalienable majesty of the guilty pair. 
They never met again ; but six years later, after 
long prayer and penance, there came to Laun- 
celot, one night, a vision, warning him to seek 
once more the convent at Almesbury, where 
he would find Guinevere dead ; and to see 
that she was buried > beside her lord, King 
Arthur. 

" Then Sir Launcelot rose up or day, and told 
the hermit. 4 It were well done,' said the her- 
mit, ' that ye made you reacty, and that ye dis- 
obey not the vision.' Then Sir Launcelot took 
seven followers with him ; and, on foot, they 
went from Glastonbury to Almesbury, the 

18 



274 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

which is little more than thirty miles. And 
thither they came within two days, for they 
were weak and feehle to go. And when Sir 
Launcelot was come to Almesbury, within the 
nunnery, Queen Guinevere died but half an 
hour before. And the ladies told Sir Launce- 
lot that Queen Guinevere told them all, or she 
passed, that Sir Launcelot had been priest near 
a twelvemonth. w And hither he cometh, as fast 
as he may, to fetch my corpse; and beside my 
lord, King Arthur, he shall bury me.' Where- 
fore the queen said, in hearing of them all, 'I 
beseech Almighty God, that I may never have 
power to see Sir Launcelot with my worldly 
eyes/ 'And thus,' said all the ladies, 'was 
ever her prayer, these two days, till she was 
dead.' Then Sir Launcelot saw her visage, 
but he wept not greatly, but sighed." 

The " Idyls" themselves contain no touch finer 
than this last. Sir Launcelot's own release was 
not long delayed, — " For he did never after eat 
but little meat, nor drank ; and evermore, night 
and day, he prayed, but sometime slumbered a 
broken sleep ; and ever he was lying grovelling 
on the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere." 



THE ARTHURIAD. 275 

His brethren remonstrated with hirn for his 
despair, but his answer was simple : " 4 When I 
remember me how, by my default, mine orgule, 
and my pride, that they were both laid full low, 
that were peerless that ever was living of Chris- 
tian people, wit you well,' said Sir Launcelot, 
; this remembered of their kindness and mine 
unkindness sank so to my heart, that I might 
not sustain myself.' So the French book 
maketh mention." 

In six weeks, he also died. " Thou, Sir 
Launcelot," cried his brother, Sir Ector, as he 
stood by his wasted remains, " there thou liest, 
that were never matched of earthly knight's 
hand ; and thou wert the courtiest knight that 
ever bare shield ; and thou wert the truest friend 
to thy lover that ever bestrode horse ; and thou 
wert the truest lover of a sinful man that ever 
loved woman; and thou wert the kindest man 
that ever strake with sword ; and thou wert the 
goodliest person that ever came among press of 
knights; and thou wast the meekest man, and 
the gentlest? that ever ate in hall among ladies ; 
and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal 
foe that ever put spear in the rest." 



276 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVfiRES. 

It is evident, that both Malory and the author 
of the " French book " believed far too sincerely in 
the reality of their characters, seriously to doubt 
that Arthur's mysterious evanishment was indeed 
death. However, Malory observes, that "some 
men yet say, in many parts of England, that 
Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our 
Lord Jesu in another place. And men say that 
he shall come again, and lie shall win the holy 
cross. I will not say it shall be so, but, rather, 
I will say, lure in this world he changed his life. 
I > 1 1 1 many men say that there is written upon 
his tomb this verse: i Hie jacet Arthur us, Hex 
quondam^ Rexque futurusJ 1 " 

May not the laureate have closed his tale 
with Arthur's mystic removal to A vallon, rather 
than with these last affecting incidents, — which 
undoubtedly confirm our human sympathy with 
the creatures from whom we are now loath to 
part, — by way of additional tribute to the char- 
acter of the Prince Consort, who seemed to him 
" scarce other than his own ideal knight," as an 
unspoken professional intimation, that in him 
the fancy of the early ages had actually found 
its fulfilment ? 



THE ARTRTJBIAD. 277 

So much for the material out of which the 
great Victorian poet has constructed the frame 
of his most durable work. How entirely we 
owe to himself the spiritual unity and symmetry 
of it is too obvious for further remark. Yet, we 
are far from agreeing with those who think that 
he has defaced the naivete of ancient story, by 
infusing into it a too modern scrupulousness. 
It is a question whether morality is ever modi- 
fied by time so much as by those other influ- 
ences, — clime and race. The endeavor to cast 
off the conscience which we know, and to sub- 
stitute for it the supposed conscience which 
regulated a by-gone state of society, almost 
always fails deplorably, sometimes disgustingly. 
Thus, the " Defence of Guinevere, " and the 
other Arthurian poems of William Morris, with 
all their melody and passion, barely escape repul- 
siveness ; and, for a similar reason, the studies 
of Matthew Arnold, in the " Story of Tristram," 
though pretty, are, in their fancied reality, ex- 
quisitely unreal. It is the mistake of painting 
things preposterously, because they "seem so," 
which is the favorite foible of our generation, in 
more than one branch of art. Chivalry, the 



278 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

motif of all mediaeval romance, was the youngest 
dream concerning social relations of the modern 
world after its conversion to Christianity, — a 
part of the general ecstasy of its recent regen- 
eration. It was the bright, audacious ideal of a 
love between mortal man and woman as wholly 
Bupersensual as the fabled love of the Redeemer 
for his bride, the church. The knight assumed, 
under the formal sanction of the church, a triple 
vow, which constituted his practical religion, — 

to serve his master Christ, to succor the defence- 
less, to love one woman, and her supremely. It 

seems not naturally to have occurred to the 
Latinized mind of Southern Europe to inquire, 
what woman? If, as indeed usually happened, 
she chanced to be the wife of another man, it 
was equal. The love of chivalry was a something 
which transcended all accidental relations and 
prudential arrangements. And the love which 
is so melodiously celebrated by the more refined 
of the southern troubadours is, in very truth, 
just such a sublimated sentiment. It is incapa- 
ble of coarse offence. Natural jealousy cannot 
attain unto it. We may listen for hours to the 
echoes of those rapturous lyrics, and find them 



THE ARTHURIAD. 279 

always the same, — sweet, ardent, innocent be- 
cause unmoral, — breathing an air of sunny li- 
cense, awakening not the faintest vibration of 
the sense of right and wrong. 

But the Trouveres and the minstrels were, for 
the most part, the descendants, or, at least, the 
near kindred, of those quaint barbarians of whom 
Tacitus wrote with languid wonder and approba- 
tion, " Quanquam severa illic malrimonia nee 
ullam morum partem magis laudaveris" The 
theoretic lady-love of the Norman or Scandina- 
vian knight could hardly be other than his wife, 
present or future. Behold an earnest restriction ! 
The path of honor at once becomes narrow, strait, 
and difficult. All deviations from it are recog- 
nized as transgressions, all tragic results of such 
deviations as punishment. Where, as in the 
story of " Launcelot and Guinevere," there are 
struggles, remorse, and a piteous expiation, our 
keenest sympathies are, no doubt, demanded, 
and not vainly, for those who love and sin. 
But where, as in the story of " Tristram and 
Isolt," the constitutional instinct of chastity is 
unblushingly defied, the effect is one of extreme 
coarseness. Here is precisely the spirit of con- 



280 TROUBADOURS AND TROUVERES. 

scious and blasphemous brutality which M. Taine 
is always encountering amid his researches 
through our earl}- literature, and which partly 
fascinates and partly horrifies, but always 
amazes, him. He barely recognizes the appar- 
ently irresistible truth, that the veiy impudence 
and desperation of the spirit in question argue 
the presence of a more tyrannous conscience 
than can be inferred from the milder and more 
graceful licentiousness of softer climes. 

If there ever could have been a knightly 
Arthur, and he could ever have founded an 
ideal code and state, they may well have been 
essentially the code and state whose brief glory 
Tennyson has so splendidly portrayed. It was 
a sublime but very premature dream, the disap- 
pointment of which appeared inevitable, even in 
the days of Malory. Let us derive what con- 
solation we may from the fact that it appears 
no more than probable in the days of Tennyson. 



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